Multidisciplinary artist Serwah Attafuah, known for constructing ethereal, dystopian cyber landscapes that center powerful and evocative subjects, has been creating since childhood. In the digital realm, she found widespread acclaim with the rise of web3–her piece “Creation of My Metaverse (Between this World and the Next)” was included in Sotheby’s landmark “Natively Digital” auction, and she has partnered with numerous brands and creators to bring collective visions to life. Based in West Sydney, Australia, she plays heavy metal music in addion to fostering her career as a phenomenon in the digital art space.

“EXPLORATION,” Serwah’s recent collaboration with NARS Cosmetics for ORGASM, ACTIVATED, in partnership with SuperRare, is inspired by the tones and energy of the brand’s Orgasam Collection, bringing digital worlds together with notions of beauty and self-expression. An AR filter, ”EXPLORATION,” is a representation of self-love and discovery. Serwah spoke to SuperRare Labs Content Strategist Oli Scialdone about “EXPLORATION,” digital expression, and the distinct hallmarks of her practice.  

Oli Scialdone: Before coming to digital art, you were an oil painter. Can you tell me a little bit about how you found not only digital art, but NFTs? How have you explored self-expression throughout your journey as an artist across mediums?

Serwah Attafuah: Both of my parents are artists, so I started being creative at a pretty young age. My dad is an African storyteller and metal sculptor, my mum is a graphic designer and painter. I was always encouraged to try new things, so when I found a set of oil paints in my parents garage/studio, I instantly fell in love and painted every day. We lost our garage in my early teens and I had to find another way to be creative, but I really thought long and hard about what medium would enable me to be creative whenever/however/wherever I wanted. Digital art made the most sense; all I really needed was a computer and I could run free. So now, I’ve been making digital art for over 12 years, which is almost half my life. I started out really experimental because I taught myself and had no real teacher or mentor telling me I was doing things ‘the wrong way.’ It worked out really well in the end because now I feel like I have a style that isn’t attainable, because I created my own systems of doing things. 

I got into NFTs in mid 2020 when curator Lindsay Howard invited me to be a part of a digital art group show powered by NFTs. I had only heard of NFTs in passing, but once I got started, it totally changed my life and the way I looked at art moving forward.  

OS: You began a TEDx talk you gave in February by speaking about the many metaverses you explored online while growing up, saying that “Having the freedom to try on different metaphysical hats with the technological assurance of an undo button allowed me to curate and explore my identity for years to come.” What did it mean for you to create digital spaces where you could safely explore and express your identity? How did that influence your artwork in ORGASM, ACTIVATED?

SA: It was so important and influential for me to have had those spaces growing up in early versions of the metaverse. I probably would not have gravitated so much to digital art if I hadn’t had those lived experiences. I actually was homeless for a short time when I was a child–going to the internet cafe and diving into a digital wonderland was a bright escape for me. Now I can create spaces from scratch that are sanctuaries and safe havens, and it’s super important to have those for my mental health. I’ve always wanted to be a world builder, and 3D art gives me the tools to do that. Creating the ORGASM universe in pink and gold shades is an extension of this.

OS: You’ve described your artwork as “surreal cyber dreamscapes and heavenly wastelands, populated by afro-futuristic abstractions of self.” What are your thoughts on how those dreamscapes and wastelands in your worlds interact with the images of the self that you depict? How did this theme in your work translate into your work “EXPLORATION” in the ORGASM, ACTIVATED collection?

SA: My work is really about pushing the surreal in both contemporary and traditional view. It’s also heavy on the theme of afrofuturism. To me afrofuturism is about painting afro and black cultures with a positive future focused light. My characters are what I call abstractions of reflections of self, meaning that I’m telling my story through different versions of me. With “EXPLORATION,” I really wanted to capture a feeling like the centre of the universe in orgasmic bliss through what I think is my signature art style of afrofuturism and afrosurrealism.  

OS: How did the shade Orgasm inspire your work and interact with your self-expression as an artist?

SA: Pink and gold tones have always been a constant in my work. I see it as a symbol of strength and feminine power. I actually have a deep passion for makeup and have been using Orgasm since I was 15; I feel like I’ve always been trying to replicate the same glittering skin effect and strong glowing looks across all my digital characters.

OS: Can you tell us a little more about your creative process in bringing the piece to life? How did you go about creating the artwork itself, and then translating it into an experiential AR filter that allows others to self-express in the context of your creation?

SA: I started by really trying to tap into what Orgasm meant to me. It’s something personal yet universal. I have a philosophy that an artwork is never really finished and revisit and expand on concepts constantly. So I decided to expand on my piece “Voidwalker” (2020) to create “EXPLORATION,” tying to the subject of universal orgasmic bliss. I first started with mapping out where all the 3D planets would be, then worked on the lighting and overall vibe. The 3D makeup was really interesting to explore. I love working in AR and to be able to create a piece of artwork to go with it was really special. 

View ORGASAM, ACTIVATED here on SuperRare.

With a distinctly posthumanist bend, the artist Dr. Alex Box has built a career around exploring the limits of identity and self-expression through makeup and beauty, and has pushed those limits at every opportunity. As one of the founding editors of the fashion and art publication King Kong, her artistic practice and philosophy have impacted creative spaces on a global scale, where she has collaborated with designers, musicians, technologists, photographers, and artists across mediums. 

Her latest collaboration for NARS Cosmetics’ ORGASM, ACTIVATED, in partnership with SuperRare, celebrates the legacy and palette of the brand’s Orgasm Collection and represents the intersections of technology, beauty, and the self. The artwork, “PULSATION,” is an AR filter teeming with energy and rendered in the classic pinks and golds of the NARS’ Orgasm shade. Alex spoke to SuperRare Labs Content Strategist Oli Scialdone about “PULSATION,” beauty futurism, and constructing identity through expression.    

Oli Scialdone: Your career has spanned so many spaces, physical and digital. Can you speak a little about your journey from fine arts to the art of beauty, and how web3 fits in? How have you viewed beauty as a form of self-expression, across traditional and digital mediums?

Dr. Alex Box: For me, traversing traditional and emerging spaces is an essential part of the narration and navigation of the body and identity and self expression. We exist on many planes, both physical and digital. My origins in fine art had the body and performance at its core, commenting on beauty symbolism, aesthetic consumption, and desire. Then that lens inverted when my process and practice became desired by the fashion industry and I navigated an unique space within beauty and fashion. I was then able to comment, respond and evolve the narrative from the inside over the last 25 years. Tech has always been a vital material in my creation; its constant evolution of tools and dimensions opens a plethora of new ways to explore the body and identity.  Web3 is presenting possibilities of the body as immersive experience, collective consciousness, an omniversal presence. This capability gives flesh to the  possibilities at a deeper narration of the self beyond the physical and a new aesthetic based in a  more philosophical exploration.  

OS: You’ve described yourself as a “beauty futurist.” What is a futurist perspective on beauty,  and how does it differ from more traditional perspectives? How did this perspective apply in ORGASM, ACTIVATED, where you bring to life an iconic brand and shade as a digital artwork, and what initially drew you to participate in the collaboration?

DAB: A Beauty Futurist perspective encompasses foresight and insight, speculative design and conceptual parallels, that go beyond the physical and material into technological experiential and emotional aspects of beauty. My approach to ORGASM, ACTIVATED was very much an immersive one; both the filter and the artwork are presenting spatial texture, tone and color as an emotional environment, product as experience. Conceptually I was looking to create ‘feeling’ more than seeing, the viewer participating in a ‘moment’ that’s transformative and captures the ‘spirit’ and dimension of the NARS Orgasm range. This iconic brand has a presence of art and sensuality committed to subtlety and complex colour, immersing the viewer in a rich narrative.  As a multidisciplinary artist, I’m drawn to working with brands with whom I share these parallel aesthetics and ethos. 

OS: In a 2022 interview for Wunderman Thomson, you spoke about designing identity, saying that it “traverses both the physical and digital.” What does it mean to design identity? How much can our identities be designed?  Can you give us a glimpse of how you brought this perspective to life throughout the process of creating “PULSATION?”

DAB: Identity Design is to describe the methodology of creative practice in developing identity through the principles of form, function, personhood, aesthetic, ethos, and psychology. As we exist in the multiverse, we are expressing a multiplicity of self, ‘A prismatic Identity.’ These require new forms of visualization and expression ‘design.’ This perspective is brought to life by envisaging the interconnectedness of all things and vibrant matter, the figuration of symbolism and spirituality.

OS: Your artwork “PULSATION” has such a warmth to it–a serene type of energy. Can you speak a little on the piece, the process of making it, and translating it into an AR filter? 

DAB: Thank you, that’s exactly the tone and texture I wanted to convey! The serenity of a state untroubled and transcendent, the twinkling embers after the euphoria, a warm and pulsating after glow . I desired to create an artwork that connected a ‘feeling’ with the viewer, the eyes in the image are closed, suggesting the inner world, traveling into a realm of the senses. For the “PULSATION” piece I used the Metahuman Creator, a digital human configurator. I sculpted a unique human for this project, whose identity I wanted to have a presence that embodied the ‘sense ‘ of ORGASM, ACTIVATED. In the artwork I’ve hand drawn the tonality, dimesson, makeup, and texture using Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blender, adding photographic real life swatches of makeup. The AR filter translated the immersive and transformational sensual experience of orgasm, which is a similar transformational dimension to makeup–both makeup and orgasms exist through connection with the skin. The movement in the filter allows me to create visual  poetry imagining the inner kinetic journey and felt experience.

OS: What were the attributes of NARS’ Orgasm shade that inspired the piece? 

DAB: It’s movement and emotional quality but also its paradox, its mercurial subtle shifts are delicate yet boldly complex, capable of depth and dimension, euphoric and serene in equal measures, much like an orgasm itself.

View ORGASAM, ACTIVATED here on SuperRare.

“We are already cyborgs,” declares Scottish visual artist Hallidonto. “It’s all mutations and extensions. The computer is literally the representation of the human brain.” 

Now based in London, a large portion of Hallidonto’s work centers on the ‘Cyborg Manifesto,’ a concept that explores the contemporary (in)human condition and dystopian imagery of the cyborg. And just like cyborgs, who use technology to evolve the notion of human, Hallidonto is using Web3 to evolve his creative vision. His latest artistic endeavor is Sanctum Cyborgia – an immersive, cyborg, post-human opera that will take place both IRL and inside the metaverse. 

Hallidonto’s cyborg opera is a progression of ideas built upon the shoulders of his past projects. And, as far as cyborg-themed metaverse operas go, it’s a perennial artistic endeavor.

“I think it’s one of the first,” he stated with intrepid modesty. “The opera is all about the phenomenological, the senses, and what it means to be human. It’s going to be this focus on how we sense,” he said. “And the senses that someone might’ve lost.”

Hallidonto speaks from experience. In 2006, he suffered a brain injury that impacted his hearing, and through that he developed tinnitus. “My senses have changed how I sense the world and how I feel about the world,” he said. “In the opera I wanted to really install that— how is it to experience the world as a human from this disabled viewpoint?”

“Sanctum Cyborgia” focuses on sensory input and alternative ways of experiencing the world. For Hallidonto, who was also recently diagnosed with severe ADHD and on the spectrum, that’s constantly changing. “I know now that my superpower is my creativity,” he said. “So, would I want that to be fixed? That made me ponder about these things.”

He points to the concept of ‘robot’ embedded in our lexicon stemming back to Talos in Greek mythology and Golem in Jewish folklore. And the concept goes far back in Hallidonto’s life as well.

“I’ve been obsessive with cyborgs since I was probably about five years old,” he stated. Growing up working class in Dundee, Scotland–during the Thatcher-repressed ’80s– was a catalyst for shaping his artistic work. “Everything on the TV was futuristic–but everything around you was horrible,” he said. For escapism, Hallidonto saw life through the lens of cartoons, which lent itself to shaping his universal design.

“I started with the Transformers. I was fascinated by Optimus Prime. I was fascinated by his duty to do good,” he said. “He worked to save the life of others; there was a humanism with him. He embodied the cohabitance between different species. I started to see man’s fear of his own technology.”   

Enthralled by this man/machine conflict, cyborgs became an outlet for Hallidonto’s cultural image. As a Dundonian child, he recalled putting covers over his face and thinking of it as some sort of armor, turning himself into one of the Transformers.

“A cyborg made me feel powerful,” he said. “I was obsessed by that – because I was never comfortable in my own body.” For young Hallidonto, cyborgs became a universe he could design. “I would always draw this and create stories – so it was always this kind of narrative.”

The futurism of ’80s TV also cultivated another fascination – an obsession with grids, which can be seen woven through Hallidonto’s work. “I really loved the idea of the continuous line, in the philosophical dimensions of the continuous line,” he explained. “Life is continuous and constantly evolving. And through these continuous lines and gestures, how can you capture the essence of something?”

“It changes what you believe in.” Still, he finds the whole concept of A.I. doomsday cyborgs, a la “The Terminator” boring. “In my work, there is a sense of hope.”

“No Exit,” Hallidonto’s piece on SuperRare, best exemplifies the metamorphosis of his work. This formative work dates back to 2008 and conjures the continuous lines in DNA sequences. “The human form is interesting, but after a while, not interesting,” he said. “I want to see the distortion and I want to see it evolve at the same time.”

This era was also a very personal transformative period for Hallidonto. Shortly after his brain injury, he felt he had manifested a type of personality disorder and his life was altered. “You feel like you – you don’t feel like you,” he explained. “I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I didn’t have any help.” 

Drawing was the expression he felt fitting. As his style kept evolving into larger incarnations, he also began writing poetry: to articulate feelings he was having trouble articulating through other means. “I like that kind of problematic nature of language and poetry,” he said. “Because words within themselves don’t mean anything.”

This continuous line, and its circuitous route, led to the creation of “Sanctum Cyborgia.”

“Within all of my work, there’s this universe building,” he said. “The fear of my body aging and how temporary we are. The fragility. But also, ‘What else are we going to become?’”

He filled out his roster that included an opera director based in Glasgow, a producer in Canada, a choreographer in London, as well as a composer in Florida who had previously worked on an opera called: “Cyborgs Are Dancing.”

His entire creative team comprised a larger vision for the opera. “To try and get people employed from socially, economically challenged backgrounds,” he said. “And people with disabilities – and that includes myself; I had a brain injury, so I know some of the struggles.” The diversity of the opera’s artistic team is a testament to Hallidonto’s vision: ethnic minorities, strong women, and working-class creatives.

“It’s fundamental to give people a chance,” he said. “Intelligence comes from anywhere. I don’t want homogenized talent. I don’t want fucking Disney ramming shit down your throat every five minutes. You want to see other things people have done.”

The cyborg opera will be an immersive theater experience in the vein of “Sleep No More,” where it breaks down the barrier between audience and performer.  

“You’re not watching it –you’re taking part in it. You’re actively participating,” Hallidonto explained. “Everyone wants experiential. They want an experience.” 

The story isn’t linear; it treads through the phenomenological experiences of what it means to be human within a Post/Transhuman perspective. When participants enter the opera’s world there are two sets of paths. And each group has a different, evolving experience. The opera’s various themes are built from Hallidonto’s very personal universe. 

“The forms and performances I do, some of it is quite dark,” he said. “From the hatred of the human body to the beauty of eating. Or the madness of tinnitus; all embodied in my eclectic dialogue.” Adding, “There’s a fine line between cheese and dark; so, I manage not to fall into the category of the cheese.”

The storylines focus on a glitch in a computer in a matryoshka doll.

“I’m obsessed with Russian matryoshka doll –because that’s a continuous line; it’s genealogy,” said Hallidonto. “We’ve evolved to the point we’re not even a human anymore; we are these massive objects out in space. And there’s a glitch in one of the computers. And what it’s done is bringing back elements of humanity from different periods of time. Whether it’s the neanderthal or total human cyborg or whatever.”  

The reaction which Hallidonto wants to get from people is something between confusion and redirection “What is this? What have I just listened to? What have I seen? What have I just smelled? What has this just done to me?”

“It’s not about making sense, it’s about that experience,” he stated. “Opera, at its essence, is an epic poem. You go through these experiences from the opera, and you’re in this epic poem.” he said. “You’re part of the glitch – but you don’t know it as you’re going through it.”

“I’m conscious of tech poverty,” he stated. “Everyone talks about access and stuff, but do people actually have access to the tech?” he said. “If you’re trying to get people from all these backgrounds, the opera has to come to them.”

This was the catalyst for creating a real-world adaptation of the opera along with the metaverse version – to bring the opera to people who might not have access to the needed tech to experience it. 

“It’s not contained within a theater, so there’s no scale. It could be anywhere. We have abandoned buildings,” said Hallidonto. “So that way it’s accessible.” 

Conversely, the metaverse version will play out like a game, which allows for people to experience it in different ways.  

“Somebody’s singing to you in the opera, they’ll be saying it in sign language as well. So, there’s multiple ways of how it’s been interpreted.”     

For the metaverse, Hallidonto has also brought onboard a friend that works for the company Cyborg Nest – which manufactures sensory perceptive augmented devices – to help build out technology that will allow blind people to have a sensory experience with the opera.

“You’ve got touch in VR. You got new developments in VR, you’ve got stuff you can move with your mind,” he explained. “There are not any games for people who are in the disabled community. And that’s why I think VR is a powerful medium.”

For “Sanctum Cyborgia,” Hallidonto wanted to create work that would be relevant to the NFT medium. “I sat back to watch, and spent the time developing something, to see what this space is all about,” he said. How NFTs interplay with the opera is allowing people to buy skins for the metaverse version – and deploying NFTs for funding of the project and membership in building a community. 

“DAOs and utility can generate new types of ways of infrastructure and create jobs,” he said. “To have the utility for the physical and the Meta, not just from a conceptual idea, but seen from an investor point of view, people are going, ‘Oh, this is something I’d invest in’ – because it has legs. It has value.” 

Hallindonto added: “Opera is the theater of the world. So, it makes sense how opera itself is tied to finance. NFTs are tied to finance,” he said. “Creating financial literacy by using the NFTs by seeing the value in the creative arts.”

Hallidonto sees “Sanctum Cyborgia” evolving like one of his continuous line drawings. He’s written the first incarnation of the opera – but there will be a continuum, leaving room in the future for other creatives to come and continue the story in their own way.

“This story can continue without me,” he said. “So, it evolves. It becomes bigger, it becomes a continuous line, it becomes this emotional thing.

For Hallidonto there is always that constant evolution of thought and how we experience the world as we create our own stories, our own narratives and our own universes.