UNTOUCHABLE

OCTOBER 7TH, 2022

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(This article is the result from a conversation between Mentalnoise and Lucasoxx on the PRTL Mezz, his Twitch Channel)

Born and raised in Caldas, a little town one hour away from Medellín, Colombia, Mentalnoise’s youth was conflictive, under the gaze of a traditional Christian family, most of her identity has been denied or judged even by her most inner circle. But when injustice constantly crosses you and hypocrisy prevails in the institutions of power claiming to dictate "the world's morality", there is a voice inside that emerges with more strength to fight against that impunity. There isn’t any speech that can overshadow what we see and feel every day when we go out on the street.

It's been a year since her first best-selling NFT came to light, in a wonderfully friendly event on Tezos, Objkt4Objkt. This was an impulse and a revelation to understand her work had a place in a new market prepared to see and consume her art. Recently, she quit her job as a designer to fully dedicate herself to NFTs.

The quarantine ended up consolidating her artistic project as we know it today. Mobilized by the high flow of information during the isolation, Mental encountered several cases of corruption in her country and a society that showed its different facets from the most supportive to the most cruel. It was at that moment that the idea of the mask, the evil bunny, emerged as the structure and concept of her next pieces.

Committed to the political, social and cultural reality of her country, art allows her to express what moves her; allows her to denounce evils in society; allows her to raise her voice in social networks with impact and generate critical thinking in the spectator. In her work we discover references to Colombian popular culture, the media show generated by politicians, and the injustices that surround us, added to her own internal universe, "the mental hole".

Mental says she likes "to generate images from the noise of my mind". The windows function as an analogy about observing the outside world during isolation or a mobile phone connected to the internet in which we observe constant information as if it were a window to the world. We live with our own mental noise and externalize it in one way or another. In her case, art functions as that nexus that connects what happens emotionally inside her with an external world in constant contradiction.

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Undoubtedly, her journey has made her reflect on her place in the art world, the construction of her voice and the empowerment of her message. In her pieces, every detail is thought out and shared with her peers to generate a sincere and honest debate. The questioning is not only towards others, but also inward. In her own words, "it's not just about creating art and that's it, it's about generating interaction around the art created. Talking through the images and exchanging opinions with the community.”

The w3b has allowed her to reach goals she never thought possible and to express herself freely in a collaborative environment of artists and collectors from all over the world. It is very important for her to connect with colleagues, generate feedback on her pieces and share knowledge, even though she considers that she has a "paisa English" and that this is a barrier that at the moment prevents her from expanding her interaction even further. However, this does not stop Mental in her quest for construction. Today she is part of ArChain NFT Lab, La Creme de la Creme and Tokenómeno, spaces where artists and communities from all over the world come together.

As a woman artist, lesbian and Latin American, it is very important to be able to think about the impact that the w3b can have on an artist like her. The intersectionalities as inhabitants of the so-called "third world" often make our voices invisible. The cultural impact (real and virtual) that we can generate today from this technology is something that we are just building, but we bet that it can be the ideal place of expression not only for us, but also for future generations. From the "underground" of the world, from tezos and from our own realities we build a future in which we can work, formalize, identify problems and propose solutions to our art and culture. Mental is a great companion on this path, an artist who is definitely worth getting to know, and whose passing will not be forgotten in the path of the blockchain and posterity.