Damien Hirst Burns His Own Artworks for NFT Project

• Damien Hirst burns his millions of dollars of artworks for the NFT project, “The Currency.”
• His live streamed event assured that his artworks exist only in the form of an NFT.

“The Currency” : NFT Project of Damien Hirst

British artist, Damien Hirst, yesterday (October 11, 2022) started a live stream of his London gallery at 12.30pm BST as a part of his own non-fungible token (NFT) project named “The Currency.” In his project live stream event, he burned his own millions of dollars of artworks and assured that these artworks exist only in the form of an NFT moving ahead.

After the sale of a series of NFTs, Hirst starts burning his own artworks. He asked the buyers of his latest collection of art pieces to select either the physical artwork or the NFT that represents the artwork. The one who chose the NFTs were assured their bought physical art piece would be destroyed.

Also, when he was asked about how he now feels after burning his art pieces, he replied “It feels good, better than I expected.” Whereas, during his NFT project live stream event, he dressed in silver metallic boiler-suit trousers with matching fire safety gloves then collected every piece of his artwork then burned it in a contained fire box. 

Here, the amount of burned art works is estimated to be nearly £10 Million. On the other hand, the leftover oil paintings will be burned at the Newport Street Gallery till The Currency exhibition ends on Sept. 30.

Well, Hirst did not respond to any interviews in advance, he indirectly replied as “To me there’s no gamble,” and in response to a question about the value of NFTs over physical art pieces, he replied “there is only ever art.”

Moreover, on his Instagram, a day earlier, he covered the topic in depth and wrote in his Instagram post that “A lot of people think I’m burning millions of dollars of art but I’m not. The value of art, digital or physical, which is hard to define at the best of times, will not be lost, it will be transferred to the NFT as soon as they are burnt.”

NFT or Physical?

From Hirst July 2022 Tweet, he wrote that deciding what to do with his portion of the art works that left his “head in a spin.” He wrote as “I have no idea what the future holds, whether the NFTs or physicals are going to be more valuable or less. But that is art! The fun part of the journey and maybe the point of the whole project.”