To mark the 75th birthday of late Freddie Mercury, British singer-songwriter of the legendary band Queen, four non-fungible token (NFT) artworks inspired by him are being auctioned off for charity. Three of them show Mercury while the fourth is a depiction of a grand white-gold piano with a crown nearby. The piano is surrounded by a pond. The auction is set by The Mercury Phoenix Trust on digital art marketplace SuperRare and the proceeds will go to the non-profit’s mission to fight AIDS worldwide. The auction will run for 75 hours starting September 20.
Queen members, Brian May and Roger Taylor, and band manager, Jim Beach, founded the Mercury Phoenix Trust, an AIDS charity, in Mercury’s memory. Mercury died from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1991. He would have turned 75 on September 5 this year.
The NFT artworks sold by the artists in the timed auction are made by artists Blake Kathryn, Chad Knight, Mat Maitland, and MBSJQ, the organisers said in a statement.
The Trust shared on YouTube a video description of Kathryn, a Los Angeles-based visual artist, who created the grand piano NFT. She says her parents introduced her to Queen. About Mercury, she says he had “such a positive, charming energy” that just pulled people in.
Besides inspiring generations through his flamboyant persona, Freddie Mercury was well known for his love for art. Before his musical career, he studied graphic art and design and later in life became a collector of art and glass works. He had one of the finest collections of Japanese antique woodblock prints, according to the statement. Once asked by Beach, the Queen’s manager, what should be done with his legacy, Mercury said, “You can do whatever you want with my work, just never make me boring”. This simple message was given to the four digital artists as the idea based on which they should create NFT artworks and touch different aspects of the singer’s persona.
A huge craze has surrounded NFTs, which are digital assets of real-world images, videos etc., with a blockchain-based record of ownership. The word “non-fungible” means one of a kind and that they cannot be duplicated.