The Life Cycle of a Tomb Guardian

The life and death of a tomb guardian, the resurrection of which requires the act of transaction or transfer on the blockchain.

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.

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THE MoPAr COLLECTION: 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.

Click to explore each tomb guardian’s art history and journey.

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.

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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.

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Rite of Passage

Connie Bakshi

Interview with the Artist

The Life Cycle of a Tomb Guardian

1

Rite of Passage

One of a pair of painted tomb guardians, ca. mid–8th century\n\nPermuted by [@conniebakshi](https://twitter.com/conniebakshi)

QmSPyyuRBfKqcsd9dqpdSts6CJeCNE8G16fLgcEpbSbpP1

Tang dynasty, 618–907

ceramic tomb guardian, one of a pair

Figure

Earthenware with silver, gold, and painted decoration

Silver, gold, multi

Princeton University Art Museum

h. 60.7 cm., w. 30.5 cm., d. 17.2 cm. (23 7/8 x 12 x 6 3/4 in.) base (.1 b): h. 7.4 cm., w. 29.2 cm., d. 22.8 cm. (2 15/16 x 11 1/2 x 9 in.)

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2

Rite of Passage

One of a pair of painted tomb guardians, ca. mid–8th century\n\nPermuted by [@conniebakshi](https://twitter.com/conniebakshi)

QmZRypVi6ZTpsM9Jmc7ENUX12qkAWjLwhnYaEimZDsAwBT

Tang dynasty, 618–907

ceramic tomb guardian, one of a pair

Figure

Earthenware with silver, gold, and painted decoration

Silver, gold, multi

Princeton University Art Museum

h. 60.0 cm., w. approx. 31.0 cm., d. approx. 21.0 cm. (23 5/8 x 12 3/16 x 8 1/4 in.) base (.2 b): h. 7.7 cm., w. 29.2 cm., d. approx. 18.5 cm. (3 1/16 x 11 1/2 x 7 5/16 in.)

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3

Rite of Passage

Unknown Chinese Figure of a Guardian (Lokapala)\n\nPermuted by [@conniebakshi](https://twitter.com/conniebakshi)

QmXZamDDA1ZDncvVkvcz3pPkwzihTyJ4KqxJRn1Cqaeh4H

early 7th–early 10th century

ceramic tomb guardian

Figure

Earthenware with three-color (sancai) glaze

sancai three colour

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Overall: 49 1/4 × 17 × 11in. (125.1 × 43.2 × 27.9cm)

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4

Rite of Passage

Unknown Chinese Figure of a Guardian (Lokapala)\n\nPermuted by [@conniebakshi](https://twitter.com/conniebakshi)

QmaFpsZMMseJxBxocxqrHMF6KkZqAXPmL8FzhAYe7JZmvm

early 7th–early 10th century

ceramic tomb guardian

Figure

Earthenware with three-color (sancai) glaze

sancai three colour

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Overall: 42 1/4 × 16 1/2 × 9 1/2in. (107.3 × 41.9 × 24.1cm)

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5

Rite of Passage

Tomb Guardian Beast\n\nPermuted by [@conniebakshi](https://twitter.com/conniebakshi)

QmaLimBWLJXHmHUjExevAvQ8Ng6K3ePDUdH7xp5MidA9mX

Western Jin dynasty (265–316)

ceramic tomb guardian

Figure

Earthenware with pigment

Remnants of some pigment

The Met Museum

H. 10 in. (25.4 cm); W. 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm); L. 17 1/4 in. (43.8 cm)

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6

Rite of Passage

Tomb Guardian Beast (Zhenmushou)\n\nPermuted by [@conniebakshi](https://twitter.com/conniebakshi)

QmcqKoYH5WmcTrodVieDELZ29GpLgDEtGT7qUdBcCC4Gpy

Tang dynasty (618–907)

Ceramic Tomb Guardian

Figure

Earthenware with pigment and three-colour (sancai) glaze

three-colour sancai glaze

The Met Museum

H. 30 3/4 in. (78.1 cm)

false

7

Rite of Passage

Tomb Guardian (Zhenmushou)\n\nPermuted by [@conniebakshi](https://twitter.com/conniebakshi)

QmTgucC5qXyKzcXFTtdf5jr24iaGnREF1BdoazfqFtQ63r