This NFT artist from Indore has made it to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona

by James · October 23, 2022

In 2020, when Indore-based NFT artist Swarnali Singh (39) entered the world of digital art, her dominant theme was the everyday life of the Indian woman. Singh’s theme and style helped her easily carve a niche in the NFT space that was quickly becoming crowded. Her characters became a series of animated faces with large, liquid eyes. Her artistic style matured in recent years in the digital world of NFTs and Web 3 platforms.

Her signature style has now helped her join the global art collective. In an ongoing exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Singh’s rendition of Picasso, a caricature created in her signature style, has found its place among other global contributors as part of an experiential art celebration.

Art from top to bottom by Swarnali, Roger Haus and Lázaro. Image credit: Exquisite Workers

“There was a call from the artistic platform – Exquisite Workers to co-create on the Web 3 collaboration platform – joyn.xyz. I responded to the call and my artwork was selected. It has been adapted and is currently part of a surrealism show at the Picasso Museum, says Swarnali Singh to Business Today.

The Barcelona Museum in collaboration with the Barcelona Dibuixa Art Festival has dedicated the year 2022 to hugs to celebrate spontaneity and physical contact in human relationships and has dedicated around 40 workshops around the city to the loving gesture of the hug. The interactive exhibition of Exquisite Workers is part of this festival.

Singh’s contribution to the figure of the exhibited Spanish artist is the head. The installation is made as a collection of cubes and imitates Picasso’s cubist art form. Singh’s digital art has been adapted to six sides of the cube. Singh’s work has been combined with the artworks of Roger Haus and Lázaro by exquisite craftsmen to create the composite Picasso figure.

“The artworks have been combined as a 3D installation for visitors to touch and feel and experience,” Singh said. Exquisite Workers opened the exhibition to a global audience via Instagram live on Sunday.

Singh has so far minted 15 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Will she now emboss the Picasso head?

“I’m not sure if I will emboss the Picasso, but it will certainly remain my most important work so far,” Singh said.

Who are exquisite workers?

Exquisite Workers is an artist collective and has been dominantly active on the Instagram space to help artists collaborate. Exquisite Workers create a timeless “Exquisite Corpse” game. The exercise of “Exquisite Corpse” consists of drawing parts of a body that goes round and then hiding each contribution, starting from the head, then it goes to a torso, and so on, without knowing what the previous part looked like.

This is how the Surrealists did it a century ago, using sheets of paper to leave marks on the edges of images before passing them to the next player. Exquisite Workers does this by using the Instagram grid as a reference and unifying the pieces with the color palette chosen by an invited artist each month. In October it is black and white.