Pioneering artist Refik Anadol’s latest digital art collection, called “Winds of Yawanawa,” may be the only bright spot in an otherwise weak NFT market.
The project, a collection of “data paintings,” generated $3.9 million (2,493 ether) in sales last week, according to data from OpenSea. The burst of interest in Winds of Yawanawa, a collaboration between Brazil’s indigenous community Yawanawa and Anadol, comes amid a broader downturn in the NFT market, with trading volumes having plummeted by more than 90% since a bull run, amplified by excitement about mainly low resolution transactions. picture-for-profile NFT collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks.
A popular NFT watcher took to
“Winds by Yawanawa did 451 ETH by volume on OpenSea yesterday, about 25% by the total ETH volume on OpenSea,” posted @punk9059, research director at Proof Collective, an organization supporting blockchain-powered art. “What is striking is partly how much [Winds of Yawanawa] does, but also how little else is done.”
The declining popularity of PFPs
The declining popularity of expensive PFP NFTs may indicate a larger shift from simpler tokenized projects, based less on artistic craftsmanship and more on belonging to an exclusive club, to more ambitious pieces minted on the blockchain. Pieces in the Winds by Yawanawa does not stand still, but visually evolves and changes constantly, not unlike an advanced screensaver.
Winds by Yawanawa NFTs”uses weather data from the tribe’s village in the Amazon rainforest, including wind speed, gusts, direction and temperature,” according to the collection’s OpenSea page. “This data then merges with the work of young Yawanawa artists, resulting in an enchanting play of traditional shapes and colors of date pigmentation.”
While NFTs in the Winds by Yawanawa has a bottom price of about $18,300, one piece, No. 503, sold Tuesday for about $26,000.
Example of changing the nature of pieces in the collection: Image: Twitter.