STORIES FOR A CITY

Explore the VR

STORIES FOR A CITY. NFT for an ever-evolving meta-landscape is the first crypto art exhibition to be held at Galleria Michela Negrini. For this occasion, the gallery transforms its premises to present Avinash Veeraraghavan’s first 5 NFTs in a setting where the audience will explore the artworks in a truly immersive VR experience.

STORIES FOR A CITY revolves around Veeraraghavan’s “I love my India”, a project commissioned as a book by Tara Publishing, Chennai, in 2001.
The book is a story of a generic Indian city, whose parts are mixed and matched from various cities and towns across India. The book is divided into three chapters: Billboard city, weak architecture and remote city (television and cinema), as every Indian city necessarily contains these three registers. With a healthy dose of popular culture, the collages in the book are that of a poetic and ironic insider decoding various fascinating and often contradictory facets of life in the generic Indian city.

Just over twenty years later this story comes to a new life, with a new narrative and five new original works, drawn from a series of photo collages from the book.

Veeraraghavan’s practice is not new to the digital medium, and in several of his works he has elected to use the digital tools. However, despite creating digital works – and worlds – for nearly two decades, the artist will mint his first NFTs in April 2022, for the exhibition “Stories for a city”, held at Galleria Michela Negrini, for which this NFTs are created.

The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Metabloc and reflects on the potential for exchanging art and creating a community via NFTs, while presenting the artworks in a physical exhibition space, with the support of technical devices (robots, holograms, screens), offering the public an art experience which is redefining contemporary digital art. Indeed, NFTs are capturing a significant moment and influencing exhibitions design practice.