Sotheby’s and UnicornDAO Host International Womens’ Day Art Auction

Sotheby’s has teamed up with digital art collective UnicornDAO to curate a non-fungible token (NFT) auction in honor of International Women’s Day.

The “My Body, My Business” auction, which kicked off Tuesday, features works from 34 traditional artists including Marina Abramović, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer and Ellen Von Unwerth. Additionally, the collection will include works from Web3-native artists including Olive Allen, Latashá, Jen Stark and Nadya Tolokonnikova, the collection’s curator and founding member of the activist group Pussy Riot.

Tolokonnikova, who co-founded UnicornDAO last year as a collective to empower women and LGBTQ+ NFT creators, is enthusiastic about utilizing art and activism to help empower women and underrepresented communities.

“Pussy Riot is meant to encourage people to be part of the movement, not just be bystanders who ‘appreciate’ and ‘support’ from the sidelines after the fact,” Tolokonnikova told CoinDesk. “We bring our fight to the streets, we bring our fight to the blockchain, to the galleries and auction houses and museums.”

The auction will be open until March 14. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to organizations like Planned Parenthood that support women’s reproductive health. Crypto donations platform Endaoment is launching PPFA.eth, a wallet address that will help direct further donations to the organization.

“Women have rights on her own body and I support every woman’s decision regarding planning parenthood,” said Abramović in a press release.

For the past two years, Tolokonnikova has been utilizing NFTs for activism and empowering underrepresented communities through her art. In January, she teamed up with fellow artistic activist Shepard Fairey to release a collection called Putin’s Ashes, to raise money for troops in Ukraine. In May 2022, UnicornDAO raised $4.5 million to help bolster its portfolio of NFT projects doing social good.