Hong Kong digital art platform to have NFT works sent to the moon on SpaceX rocket as part of lunar gallery

Mexican artists Guille Blancarte and Carlos Segovia Alanis, represented by Minte Art, are among 222 artists selected to join the Lunaprise Moon Museum

The platform’s Latin American founders see Hong Kong as Asia’s leading art centre, with greater potential from recent changes to virtual asset regulations

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on February 12, 2023. In a new mission scheduled for June, a Falcon 9 rocket will carry cargo that includes NFT artworks etched onto nano fiche disks to be part of the Lunaprise Moon Museum. Photo: AP

Published: 8:30am, 16 Feb 2023

The three Latin American founders of Hong Kong-based digital art platform Minte Art have long believed in “art without borders”, but what began as an effort to bridge cultural divides has turned into a project that will soon land the work of two of its artists on the moon as part of the first non-fungible token (NFT) lunar museum.

Artists Guille Blancarte and Carlos Segovia Alanis, both based in Mexico and represented by Minte in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district, are among 222 artists selected to join the Lunaprise Moon Museum, which came after winning BitBasel’s Art for Impact Challenge at Miami Art Week in December.

“Hong Kong is a nest of innovation, on par with the USA or Europe, for creativity. It is a land of revolutionary opportunities for any market, and even more so for the creative market,” said Marcela Barros, who co-founded Minte along with Mireya Garcia and Andrea Estrella, all of whom live in the city.

The piece El Compañero by Carlos Alanis is one of two artworks by Minte-represented artists selected for the Lunaprise Moon Museum. Photo: Handout

With two pieces from Minte’s artists now ready for lift-off, the lunar mission will offer the boutique agency its greatest visibility yet – on the smallest possible medium.

To be included in the museum, the artworks of Blancarte and Alanis will be etched onto nano fiche disks, making them indestructible but only viewable through a microscope.

The inclusion of the Mexican artists is the result of a partnership between BitBasel and NFT company Space Blue, which collaborated with Lunaprise owner Galactic Legacy Labs and Arch Mission Foundation, an organisation dedicated to preserving human knowledge.

The project is part of Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, scheduled to launch at the end of June, involving a Nova-C lander transported by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Nova-C was developed as part of Nasa’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme.