What exactly happened?
“I was approached by a Swiss company, Idoneus, an online marketplace for luxury goods. They sell absolutely everything: private islands, Picassos, villas, airplanes, you name it. They wanted to buy four works from me, with their own cryptocurrencies. They paid three million ‘Idon tokens’, equivalent to 2.5 million euros.”
What kind of work is it?
“A 8-meter-tall canvas depicting a small child pressing her face into her hands, while she is showered with dollar bills, as an indictment of capitalism. And another work is a precursor to my mural on Leidseplein (in Amsterdam, red.), of the Surinamese dancers.”
And now you are a millionaire.
“Very weird. I’ve always been poor, and that was my prospect when I became an artist. I never wanted to make big money, even tried my best to stay poor: I immediately spent money on non-profit projects.”
Are you going to do that again?
“A third goes to an Italian organization that helps children who are in a difficult situation. It is very broad: from seriously ill children to children who, just like me in the past, have problems at home and who reside in youth institutions.”
How does that money get to them?
“I will probably buy a big house and a yacht from Idoneus with those crypto coins. I can then sell it for euros.”
And the rest of the money?
“I’m going to use that to make socially critical, free paintings. I always wanted to do another project in the Arctic to draw attention to the environmental crisis. Normally there is no budget for that, now I can finance it myself. I could also buy a villa on a tropical island with 1,000 hectares of land, but that doesn’t make me happy. I want to make people think differently and thus contribute to society.”
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