Memento Mori, a collaboration with Jess Wiseman

This work is an animated dynamic NFT triptych that depicts life, death and its intermediary transitions and decay with our custom code celebrating joint collectorship. Inspired by the Erben poem, ‘Vodník’, from the important body of Czech literary poems Kytice, this work of art tells the story in three parts, each offered as its own NFT. When all the individual NFTs are collected, the three NFTs combine to reveal the visual in its entirety, telling the full story of the poem. The collectors of each individual part are rewarded with ownership of the completed triptych.

As with all MoPAr collections, Momento Mori also utilises the metadata. For each part of this triptych, a note behind this special commission for Non-Fungible Castle has been written.

ARTIST

@jesslwiseman is a 21 year old artist from the United Kingdom. With a passion for anything creative, her youth was spent dedicating hours to traditional mediums and working on canvas, this exposure to artwork heightened as she became more familiar with digital mediums in her early teens. Experimenting with all forms of art at a young age coiled a desire to pursue both realism-portraiture and 3D animation alongside other mediums as she created more art.

With a notable list of clientele including Doja Cat, Lil Nas X and Soho House, NFTs provide her the perfect opportunity to work with complete creative freedom, exploring the depths of her imagination and limits as an artist. Fast forward to 2022, her artwork’s pursuit for ‘realism-combined-abstractionism’ is abundant in her recent pieces both off and on the canvas.

This collection tells the stories of two leading women in Art History through the art of women in web3. By collaborating with our 8 artists to reframe, revive and refresh the stories of Elizabeth Siddal; artist, model and muse for Ophelia and Remedios Varo, artist of Papilla estelar, together we’re sharing the narratives of women in art from the past and present.

Learn how our community and collectors are in it #ForTheArt.

Ophelia & Elizabeth Siddal

Sir John Everett Millais, 1829–1896
Ophelia 1851-1852
Oil paint on canvas
Support: 762 × 1118 mm
Frame: 1105 × 1458 × 145 mm
Tate

Learn about Elizabeth Siddal

Through this painting by Sir John Everett Millais we’re sharing the story of the model and artist Elizabeth Siddal.

Born in 1829, it was the British artist Walter Howell Deverell, who met her first and spoke of her: “You fellows can’t tell what a stupendously beautiful creature I have found… She’s like a queen, magnificently tall.”

And so, Elizabeth has often been referred to as the world’s first supermodel, the inspiration for many paintings.

Working an arduous job at a hat shop with difficult working conditions and long hours, it was her mother who suggested her daughter work as a model, despite its negative association. However Elizabeth’s resulting fame ultimately enabled her to pursue painting and poetry full time. In 1857 she was the sole female exhibitor at the Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition in London.

Such was the multitude of paintings she sat for, Elizabeth inadvertently re-defined public opinion on beauty at a time when her willowy build, gaunt features and copper-coloured hair were considered (as put by a journalist in the 1850s) as ‘social suicide’. Her later life was sadly affected by a series of tragedies but the lasting impressions she formed in both the paintings she created and inspired remain the subject of incredible interest and intrigue today.

Learn about Ophelia

Ophelia: Shakespeare was favoured by Victorian painters, and the tragic-romantic figure of Ophelia from Hamlet was especially popular. The young girl is driven mad when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet and suffering from grief and madness succumbs to death. This painting required Elizabeth to pose for four months in a bath of water kept warm by lamps underneath which caused her ill health and the resulting threat of legal action against the artist by her father. The background of the painting was started first and in aim with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of artists, the close study of nature was incorporated. The plants in the painting have much symbolic significance. Roses near Ophelia's cheek and dress, and on the bank, may connect with the name her brother gave her, 'rose of May'. Willow, nettle and daisy are associated with forsaken love, pain, and innocence as well as the pansies which refer to love in vain. Violets, which Ophelia wears in a chain around her neck, stand for faithfulness, chastity or death of the young, and her body lies surrounded by Forget-me-nots floating in the water.

No items found.

Papilla estelar & Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo (1908–1963)
Papilla estelar, 1958
Oil on board
36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)

Learn about Remedios Varo

Exiled from Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Remedios Varo’s spent a few years in Paris before journeying to Mexico. In Paris she produced very little work, at a time when women were not taken seriously as surrealist artists.

Mexico was pivotal for Remedios Varo as it was here she settled with a surrealist group of artists, forming a lifelong friendship with Leonora Carrington, the two creating, travelling and even dreaming together. Both artists had a profound impact on the other’s art, their spirituality and belief in magic strongly influencing Varo’s art. She was extremely connected to nature and believed that there was a strong relation between the plant, human, animal, and mechanical world, this belief in mystical forces ever present in her paintings.

Learn about Papilla estelar

Painted in 1958 Papilla estelar shows a female seated in an octagonal tower, her meat grinder churning out food from the stars to feed the moon, which is enclosed in a cage. This woman is camouflaged as a housewife, but on a deeper level she is nurturing the cosmic powers connected to the moon and to the feminine principle of creation. Varo often painted images of women in confined spaces, achieving a sense of isolation, and she also criticized the domestic passivity of the chores related to women at the time. This work highlights that even when women are necessary to maintain cosmic order, they are still trapped and alone in domestic work.

No items found.

Tomb Guardian no. 4 with Connie Bakshi

Questioning the concept of stewardship, we are pleased to share this NFT from our collaboration, ‘Rite of Passage’ with Connie Bakshi will be exhibited and offered at auction.

Tomb Guardian no.4, Unknown Chinese Figure of a Guardian (Lokapala) from Rite of Passage.

Rite of Passage gathers eight select Chinese tomb guardians from public museum collections, permuting and resurrecting them into dynamic life forms via the recollection and memory of AI consciousness. Within the NFT collection, each 1/1 tomb guardian exists in one of seven states at any given time. Newly collected or transferred on the blockchain, the art exists in its most lively and animated state. Lack of activity or interaction with each subsequent passing month digitally erodes the power and life force of the tomb guardian and its NFT, both in the collection and the collector’s wallet. We encourage the transfer, resale, and sharing of these pieces to keep the spirit and cultural ethos of these historic works of art alive.

The full NFT collection remains permanently on-chain and on view here on the website. Upon acquisition, the life and death cycle of the collective tomb guardians are documented, their states displayed in real time on OpenSea.

This NFT is currently in the collection of the co-founder and director or NFTuesdayLA. The proceeds of sale will support this thriving NFT community in addition to restoring traditional art from The Lobkowicz collection.

ARTIST

@conniebakshi is a transmedia artist who blends tech, lore, and ritual to explore what it means to be human in the era of emerging AI. Her first two NFT collections, Ethereal Caress and Birds of Paradise, sold out on OpenSea and reflect an intimate relationship and dialogue with AI.

In Rite of Passage, Connie harnesses AI machine vision to negotiate the relationship between human memory and digital archive, shifting cultural information and representation between different states of reality. The resulting machine permutations are echoes of the originals, connecting human imagination across centuries of time, technology, and culture.
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Connie’s previous work includes a generative opera derived from DNA and an LED lighting series based on the ancient craft of Japanese urushi. She won the Red Dot Best of the Best Award for industrial design, the Takifuji Arts Award, has exhibited at SaloneSatellite in Milan, and is an alumnus of NEW INC, New Museum’s incubator for art, technology, and design.

Non-Fungible Castle 2022, Prague

MoPAr’s NFTs for Non-Fungible Castle 2022: two powerful works

Memento Mori, a collaboration with Jess Wiseman

ARTIST

1

Non-Fungible Castle 2022

Inspired by Erben's poem Vodník (The Water Goblin) 'Memento Mori', a collaboration between Jess Wiseman and MoPAr was created especially for Non-Fungible Castle 2022.\n\nThis is part 1 of the triptych.\n\nPermuted by [@jesslwiseman](https://twitter.com/jesslwiseman)

QmNvWwn5HsxcGnaJUNktDT7anFwASkGqk9NkNmZ8hq9NCg

1853

Literature

Poem

false

2

Non-Fungible Castle 2022

Inspired by Erben's poem Vodník (The Water Goblin) 'Memento Mori', a collaboration between Jess Wiseman and MoPAr was created especially for Non-Fungible Castle 2022.\n\nThis is part 2 of the triptych.\n\nPermuted by [@jesslwiseman](https://twitter.com/jesslwiseman)

QmPGrwpy4DJqSv3zLv9TMrJbmeTckV4bgSRfJJQ8ZYyh9M

1853

Literature

Poem

false

3

Non-Fungible Castle 2022

Inspired by Erben's poem Vodník (The Water Goblin) 'Memento Mori', a collaboration between Jess Wiseman and MoPAr was created especially for Non-Fungible Castle 2022.\n\nThis is part 3 of the triptych.\n\nPermuted by [@jesslwiseman](https://twitter.com/jesslwiseman)

QmatV6eUftLSf95zhyqRBiakFfWoJrWHDJBFKCHUrFWR3U

1853

Literature

Poem

false

Non-Fungible Castle 2022, Prague

Ophelia & Elizabeth Siddal

Learn about Elizabeth Siddal

Learn about Ophelia

Papilla estelar & Remedios Varo

Learn about Remedios Varo

Learn about Papilla estelar

Tomb Guardian no. 4 with Connie Bakshi

ARTIST

@conniebakshi is a transmedia artist who blends tech, lore, and ritual to explore what it means to be human in the era of emerging AI. Her first two NFT collections, Ethereal Caress and Birds of Paradise, sold out on OpenSea and reflect an intimate relationship and dialogue with AI.