RE/DOING VISIBILITY LABOUR IN NFT ART MARKETS

NFT (non-fungible token) art markets promised a radical departure from legacy practices and ecosystems–a truly democratic and decentralized art ecosystem. We wanted to better understand how these markets’ promises reflected in the lived experiences of artists trying to sell their artwork on these markets. To this end, we apply the sensitizing lens of visibility labour to conceptualize creators’ actions within and outside the actual creative process. We find that although NFTs promise lower entry barriers for art, artists often must conduct unremunerated and difficult forms of labour to thrive in the NFT market which further puts them in vulnerable situations that they have to overcome in the service of the market forces and the algorithms that govern them. We then discuss the implications of our findings for the artists and the broader NFT market.