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With an aim to create an inclusive arts ecosystem where art lovers, collectors, artists, gallerists, etc. are able to interact over this union of tech and art, TheUpsideSpace is a curator-led digital art platform that spotlights artistic expressions from Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. TUS was created to be more than an NFT marketplace. TUS’s purpose comes to life as an online art lab, a creator studio, and an inclusive community for discovery and discourse that celebrates both uniqueness and diversity.
To know how the idea for a platform like TheUpsideSpace emerged, Lisa Ray, an award-winning actor, accomplished author, and co-founder, said, “I met my co-founder Ayesha Khan in Singapore during COVID, and we connected over our mutual passion for art from Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. When I moved to Dubai in late 2021, we reconnected, and Ayesha proposed marrying strong artistic practices with NFTs as a way to reach a larger audience, to create an appetite and marketplace for creators from these regions from a representation point of view. Gradually, we realised that creating a holistic platform that put art and storytelling at the center was our mission. We decided on engaging curators from these regions who show the art in context and act as art buddies. But we also wanted to break some walls, and our curators can come from the world of art but also from sister industries like fashion, music, architecture, etc. We see ourselves as an art platform that is tech-enabled and powered by passion and a mandate.”
With a strong core curatorial team, they have had four phygital exhibitions since they launched in December, which is a lot for a young platform. “We were official supporters of the Dhaka Art Summit, and we have a booth at Art Dubai. We had a wonderful collaboration with Samsung India, and we are looking at deeper engagement. I was humbled to appear on a panel organized by Engendered, led by Myna Mukerjee, and Avid Learning in Delhi, speaking about how ‘One Story is Not Enough’ and how tech can be leveraged to reflect our numerous voices from the Global South. As a platform, we are nimble and willing to take feedback in order to best serve our audience and artists.”
Digitalisation is definitely required in every field, even the creative one, but do projects like TUS promote NFTs over physical art pieces?
“We are curated, which means you have an expert from one of our regions in Southeast Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East choose a theme and hand-pick artists to tell a story. We are actually engaging with artists who have physical and studio practices and who have no experience with NFTs or the skill set to turn their art into digital pieces, and we have a team that works with them on digital interventions. We work with a wide range of artists, from digital natives to traditional Gond or Patachitra artists, and we reimagine a space of discovery and discourse. Some of our artists offer the physical piece for free with the sale of an NFT. We are very mindful of how we harness technology. We take strong values and our mandate of spotlighting artists from the global south seriously, and the NFTs are the delivery system and vehicle for accessing a wider audience and also offering royalties to artists on secondary sales. It’s a new playground, a new creator ecosystem, and also a developing asset class for investors.”
NFTs are a new medium of art and can act as an extension of an artist’s practice that can help the artist access a global audience and earn an income that isn’t dependent on local volatility, as we have seen in the case of their Sri Lankan exhibition—especially when we held a prelaunch phygital event hosted by the Canadian High Commissioner to support our artists and sold out three-quarters of the art NFTs despite the fact that Sri Lanka isn’t very tech-forward. It was a great feeling. Artistic expression can adapt to many different mediums and, in fact, is aligned with the spirit of technology.
“To be creative means being open-minded, inventive, curious, and challenging the status quo, and that’s what technology does. Both coexist and complement each other. I collect both physical art and NFTs. It’s a very binary idea to believe that a new evolution in art means what came before ceases to exist. We don’t espouse this philosophy. But it reminds me of what happened when the new innovation of putting paint in tubes happened. This allowed artists to paint outdoors, which led to the Impressionist movement. Today, some of the most valued art comes from the artists of that movement, but when this 19th-century art was first viewed, it was met with outrage: This is not art! Every new innovation is initially met with resistance.”
Now a question that arises is: having decided to launch TUS in December last year, when the overall crypto market and NFT sector were undergoing record lows, what nudged them to go for it then?
“We are building a platform based on strong fundamentals and values. In fact, the crypto winter works to our advantage; it allows the hype, sensational headlines, and noise we have seen in the NFT world to die down and quality to rise to the top. The fallout of the highly speculative market has paved the way for quality adoption of the technology. The perception of NFTs is that they are generally speculative and not about the quality of artwork, and we are developing a different market. We are about elevating strong art practices from the Global South into global conversation and becoming a trusted site for discovery and discourse. We have many plans for collaborations, and while it’s challenging to build in a bear market, it represents an opportunity because no one is doing exactly what we are.”
The team works with artists who have no experience with NFTs and will work with them to offer digital interventions and create original NFTs based on their physical work.
“We will be looking at offering workshops down the line; we just launched in December. With our curator-led format, we can offer charity exhibitions that raise money for causes. We will be collaborating with the fearless collective to launch an exhibition for fundraising purposes, which will go towards supporting female artists creating murals that speak to female empowerment. We plan to have more such collections, and we are open to feedback,” concludes the co-founder.
