# The Gold Standard Exhibition: Giving Shine to Asian-Americans in NFTs

**Published by:** [CAH](https://paragraph.com/@cah/)
**Published on:** 2022-05-23
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@cah/the-gold-standard-exhibition-giving-shine-to-asian-americans-in-nfts

## Content

In previous tweets, we talked about Concept Art House is working with Drue Kataoka, whose work-“Vitruvian Woman” exhibits at #TheGoldStandard for the first- time exhibition on the major NFT platform. This exhibition, dedicated to show the works of Asian-American artists, will take place from May 1 to May 31, 2022, in celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. Today we look at the impact of NFT on Asian-Americans through #TheGoldStandard. What does it mean to uplift and empower underrepresented artists? It entails much more than just giving them a platform. We must dig deeper, and actively spread the word about their work, pay respect to their journeys and their potential, and support their creative intelligence. In 2021, NFT became the global search term of the year, and the art of NFT became the talk of the town. Crypto artists unheard of in traditional art circles, such as Beeple, Pak, etc., sold overnight for prices higher than Picasso. Art is perhaps one of the most mysterious intangible cultural products of the value system in the world. With the emergence of NFT, the mysterious black box of art transaction is opened. The collection process of NFT is open, and creators, collectors, transaction records and prices are clearly and permanently recorded on the blockchain. NFT can also be structured and published using smart contracts, whose distribution mechanisms and financial flows are transparent. This approach breaks the rules of the game that art belongs only to a small elite class. Once the work has backers, the NFT works produced and sold by smart contracts are a testament to the amount of work that participants put in. Running the entire month of May, #TheGoldStandard features 10 artists that help refract the Asian American and global pan-Asian experience through their diverse practices. With this first-of-its-kind showcase, SuperRare is communicating the importance of the diverse populations that make up the NFT ecosystem, bringing Kataoka on board to spearhead the endeavor and drive the point home. Since 2018, SuperRare has provided a stage for artists big and small. Although it may seem like a highly curatorial platform, SuperRare continues to earn accolades for its community-centric values and ventures aimed at supporting underrepresented artists. As a prominent digital artist and CEO of Drue Kataoka Art Studios, Kataoka has continued to meet and break barriers in the traditional art world. Now, in Web3, she has emerged as a champion of diversity in the NFT space with the goal of bringing recognition, acknowledgment, and celebration to the countless AAPI artists who have paved the way for the advancement of digital art. “From pushing visual technology to its limits in Hollywood special effects, to building virtual worlds for top gaming experiences, to advancing the frontier of technology art, [Asian American artists] have been the backbone of digital creativity for decades,” Kataoka said in an interview with nft now. “Asian Americans have played a critical role in turning the best-known digital franchises into household names, but they haven’t really gotten their just due. For the most part, they’ve been really toiling away in the shadows. We even have examples of some of these artists in the show: astonishingly talented, yet not as well-known as they should be.” Under the digital wave, the binary thinking of "digital - entity" has apparently unable to effectively participate in the reality. It is likely that these artists will refer institutions as the experiment platform, thus to integrate technology, social, aesthetic demand in different levels of interests, and then art have the opportunity to participate in the larger in the construction of social capital in the future. The #TheGoldStandard exhibition includes pieces minted by digital artists as well as scientists and researchers who are pushing the frontiers of what is technically possible in crypto. With “Vitruvian Woman” — a piece created by Drue Kataoka Studios in collaboration with Concept Art House — Kataoka reimagines Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man as a multi-cultural Asian American woman in a sea of gold and will a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this specific piece will benefit the non-profit Asian Health Services.

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