Divine Comedy
Divine Comedy is a series of 100 unique artworks that tell the tale of an artist’s journey through life and crypto art, each correlating to a canto of Dante’s classic work. Handcrafted over the course of 6 months using vintage Kid Pix software from 1993 – my first digital toolset!
The entire series is now available to collect, each work editioned on the blockchain as a unique erc-721 NFT.
http://divinecomedy.xyz
Divine Comedy is a series of 100 unique artworks that tell the tale of an artist’s journey through life and crypto art, each correlating to a canto of Dante’s classic work. Handcrafted over the course of 6 months using vintage Kid Pix software from 1993 – my first digital toolset!
The entire series is now available to collect, each work editioned on the blockchain as a unique erc-721 NFT.
http://divinecomedy.xyz
ARTIST STATEMENT
“In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray”
The Divine Comedy – Inferno, Canto I
The idea for this project came to me in the summer of 2024, after I read the book The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck. While I’m not typically one for the self-help genre, it came recommended as life-changing, and I felt like, yes, some change sounds nice.
The book uses Dante’s Inferno‑Purgatorio‑Paradiso arc to map the climb toward integrity. The author means this not in the sense of moral virtue, but rather the idea of aligning your inner and outer self. I was hooked by this notion, because, like Dante, I too am midway on life’s journey, having found myself lost in a dark wood of error.
The Dark Wood of Error. Inferno Canto 1 of Sarah Zucker’s Divine Comedy.
First, you are stopped in your tracks. Then, you go through hell reckoning with the error of your ways. This is followed by purgatory – a liminal time of healing, a fulcrum between the past and the future. And finally, you reach paradise, where you get to enjoy the outcome of your efforts and see how much richer your life can be when you are finally living in alignment with your truest self.
I have been editioning my art on the blockchain for 6 years, since April 2019. The hype and excitement around NFTs that exploded in 2021 brought a lot of new attention and support to my work, but it was also like trying to surf a tidal wave. The sheer force of it has been staggering.
I was well positioned for the moment. I had already found my voice, honed my craft, and steeled my resolve over many years working as an artist. I understood and had a genuine belief in the technology. And, as a mischief-maker at heart, my psychedelic worldview served me well in navigating the many twists and turns of the experience.
But, the wave finally broke. I found myself far away from where I had started, left to pick up the pieces and make sense of all that washed up alongside me. Asking myself, which adaptations truly serve me, and which were just survival strategies to keep my head above water? Now that things have settled: what kind of artist (and human) do I really want to be? What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to nurture from here?
The artist as a young artist-child (avec beret)
I knew I wanted to go back to basics for this project. After testing a number of workflows, I chose Kid Pix Studio (1993), my first digital art tool, to tell the tale of my own personal reckoning and transformation. This choice has meaning beyond the aesthetic, as the series acts as a channel between the adult artist and the inner child.
The works contain the same DNA as my long-running Videopainting style, as KidPix Studio and my Sony Videopainter originate from the same early computer graphic era. I relish the charge of minting these archaic pixels to the still-nascent future of the blockchain.
The day I got Kid Pix in December 1992.
And so, I set out on this quest in November of 2024, making an artwork a day (with some syncopation), until I completed the series in April 2025. There are 100 artworks, each correlating to a canto of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
I have woven a great deal of meaning into it; linger on the series as a whole or zoom into the details of any single canto piece and you will begin to see the hypertext throughout.
This is the tale I want to tell, not only of my personal experience, but of our collective journey. If you are in the world of crypto art, my hope is that you will see your story here. We’ve seen some weird shit, and now it’s time to reflect.
But, even in hell, it’s good to stay playful. To view even our own misdeeds and suffering with a wink. It is all equally sacred and profane – best to try and have a little fun with it.
Divine Comedy is composed of 99 still JPEG tableaux painted pixel-by-pixel, and 1 analog video artwork representing the ecstatic “Beatific Vision” as a grand finale. Each work is a single edition, minted as an erc-721 on a standalone contract.
The works are now available to collect. Existing collectors of my work are allowlisted, and new collectors may inquire to collect.
The Integrated Self. Paradiso Canto 29 of Sarah Zucker’s Divine Comedy.
Everything's Different Now
Nothing is as it has been or will be. The Present is a strange singularity.
EVERYTHING’S DIFFERENT NOW is a signature VideoThought crafted in my studio in summer 2022. I was commissioned by Friends With Benefits x OpenSea, and this vision came through the channels. The piece will debut in an IRL installation as part of The Flock at FWB Fest.
I’ve been creating artworks in my “Now” series since 2018, and see them as a chance to reflect on the flavor of the present moment. This leads to statements that are paradoxically both personally topical, and universally evergreen.
I’m struck by the cumulative effects of recent change. Dramatic shifts around digital art and NFTs, the end(?) of the Covid era, and a lot of personal growth as I’ve met the call to level up my art practice.
VideoThoughts are special little mindgems: they use video feedback to visualize the recursive nature of experience itself. Everything is *always* different now, which in turn makes the next now even more different, and so on and so forth.
This is the genesis token on my new VideoThoughts contract provided by Manifold. Like all my single editions moving forward, the piece will integrate with SuperRare and elsewhere for an elegant cross-platform collector experience.
Everything’s Different Now is now available on SuperRare.
You Can Save This
Mimesis is the means by which culture flourishes!
2021 has been one of the most extraordinary years of my life. I’ve been a working artist for over a decade, largely without reward beyond the satisfaction of answering the call for expression within myself. This year, a confluence of events has led to my work being recognized on increasingly grand stages.
Not only am I grateful, but I am undeniably changed by the experience. I have spent this time steeped in the culture of our burgeoning community, as well as witnessing the pushback from those outside of it.
It’s only fitting, then, that I would end the year by debuting an artwork borne out of this feedback loop at Art Basel Miami – on my birthday, no less.
“You Can Save This” is a signature VideoThought – a statement with an open-ended context, visually manifested so as to allow for meaning to blossom.
I feel that one of my gifts as an artist is the ability to take ugly sentiments and transmute them into works that are transcendent and meaningful.
“You Can Save This” has become one of the rallying cries of those who reject NFTs. They believe that the ability to save and share our artwork is somehow proof that it does not hold value.
And yet, we who prize incorporeal art know that the ability to save and share it is a feature, and not a flaw. Its ability to network itself and spread is the very aspect which makes it valuable. We have a word for this, which we use also to describe the web-building tendencies of mycelium in the forest, or micro-organisms in a petri dish.
We call this “culture.”
And so, with this piece, I seek to alchemize this critique into a badge of honor. What we are doing here is a direct evolution of the human culture which has led us to this point. We are laying the groundwork for a new networked humanity.
As with most of my VideoThoughts, there are multiple interpretations. I don’t wish to squash the viewers’ experience by being overly prescriptive, but I do want to speak to an additional personal viewpoint.
Much has been made of the rapid growth of the NFT space, and its inevitable correlation with speculative finance. My feeling is that this will sort itself out, as it always does. My great hope, and intention, is that NFTs serve as a Trojan Horse, allowing for new digitally-native forms and voices to permeate mainstream consciousness.
The fiscal elevation of the artist class that we are experiencing is analogous to that of both the Renaissance and the Zombie Formalist movement – we get to determine whether we develop these markets around our aesthetics, or if we develop our aesthetics around the markets.
Ideally, the relationship between the collectors and the artists is one of glorious symbiosis – each plays a crucial role in the endeavor of the other. We risk losing the greater cultural meaning of this movement if we allow this dynamic to become unbalanced and favor only the desire for “number go up.”
And so, I see this piece as being both a statement of fact as well as a plea – You Can Save This. Decentralization affords us a degree of agency that’s new to us – we must reckon with the power of our will, and wield it with great responsibility.
The use of video feedback as a visual motif is central here, as it reflects the delicate paradox of intention we are all dancing with as we establish the nascent Metaverse.
I created this work in a rare 9:16 ratio specifically designed for IRL display. It will debut at The Gateway, the first large-scale presentation of Crypto Art at Art Basel Miami from NFTNow x Christie’s.
I was curated into the show by SuperRare, my OG and still most-used Crypto Art platform. I am putting the work on reserve auction there on December 2nd. Bids can be placed here.
YOU CAN SAVE THIS was minted on SuperRare on November 30th. It is on Reserve Auction as of December 2nd at 10am ET. Reserve is set at 12Ξ.
Way Back Now
WAY BACK NOW is a signature VideoThought reflecting on the Now. Specifically, when everything’s moving so fast you find yourself feeling nostalgic for the present moment.
This piece is the latest installment of the “NOW” series, a strand of works within my greater body of text art. The “NOW” series pairs the infinite looping recursion of analog camcorder feedback with original animation, evoking a “strange loop” as a means of visualizing the weirdness of Time.
The first piece in the series, WHAT NOW, was minted in June 2019 on SuperRare, and is in the @artnome collection. The second piece, ETERNAL NOW, was minted February 2020, and is in the @niftytime collection. The third piece, LUCIDITY NOW, was minted June 2020, and is in the @satsmoon collection.
With WAY BACK NOW, I’m revisiting the “NOW” series from my vantage point in 2021, having experienced both the exponential growth of the Crypto Art space as a whole and my own position within it.
I often point out that I use nostalgia as something of a Trojan Horse in my work – a way to draw people in with aesthetics of the Past as a means of looking at the Present. WAY BACK NOW is a conceptual paradox that could sum up my entire body of work – a logistical impossibility that tickles the brain into a new way of seeing things.
WAY BACK NOW was created in my studio in summer 2021. The Token will be a Hi-Res GIF. The collector will also receive a 4K mp4 optimized for display, and a smaller mp4 optimized for social media.
WAY BACK NOW was minted on SuperRare at 4pm ET / 1pm PT on September 8, 2021.
The Primary Sale is a Reserve Auction starting at 12Ξ. CLICK HERE TO VIEW OR BID.
SPACE LOAF – SuperRare & Bonhams present CryptOGs
CryptOGs: The Pioneers of NFT Art
June 21st-30th 2021. Lot 4.
Space Loaf is one of those artworks that came about serendipitously, yet went on to become one of my most widely beloved pieces.
My sassy Siamese Cat, Ginny, is a frequent fixture (and mischief-maker) in my studio. I shot the footage for this piece after discovering her casually loafing upon equipment I had spent all afternoon carefully setting up.
I piped the footage into my analog video rig, a custom-built system of hardware I play like an instrument, manually manipulating the signals to my liking. The cat appears to be hovering through a digital-analog cosmos, looking around inquisitively in response to the ever-shifting landscape.
I conceived this piece on April 8, 2018, almost *exactly* one year before I minted my genesis token on SuperRare. It was widely shared on Instagram and Facebook on its initial release. I have been featuring it in my pinned tweet on twitter throughout 2021 as an introduction to my Art.
Prior to crypto art, the only way I made my work directly collectible was through my Video Alchemy clothing line. I have long been a lover of fashion, and wanted to translate the colorful rhythmic qualities of my video art to textile. I ran the clothing line from 2017-2020, and the Space Loaf Tee was my #1 bestseller.
Something about this piece speaks deeply to people. Of course, cats have long been a part of Internet culture. But I think this work has a sublimely relatable quality to it. You see Space Loaf and think, “It me!” Floating, titillated and confused, through the primordial soup of cyberspace.
Space Loaf feels like the perfect piece to offer up for CryptOGs at Bonhams x SuperRare. It’s an iconic artwork that serves as a prelude to my entire canon of on-chain editions. And it speaks to the experience of being an early pioneer of the Metaverse, a silly little creature exploring this newly forming ethereal realm.
Space Loaf was conceived in April 2018, and minted on SuperRare on June 16th, 2021.
The collector of this single edition will receive an .mp4 of the piece optimized for display.
Bids can be made in Ethereum or USD through Bonhams Online Auction. The winner will be able to pay via MetaMask or the Exchange of their choosing.
BID ON BONHAMS JUNE 21-JUNE 30 2021
PREVIEW THE FULL VIDEO TOKEN ON SUPERRARE
Self Transcending – Sotheby's Natively Digital
My work is on auction at Sotheby’s June 3-10, 2021 as part of Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale. Self Transcending is a signature VideoPainting I created to mark this moment in both my personal artistic journey and the evolution of Crypto Art and NFTs as a whole.
Interested collectors will be able to bid on the work in cryptocurrency, an aspect which streamlines the auction process for crypto native collectors while allowing for the work to be valued in its native format.
Self Transcending has been minted as Token #0 on the custom “Sarah Zucker” smart contract. The contract was built for me by Nameless specifically for the Sotheby’s Sale. This erc-721 has been elegantly crafted with crypto-savvy collectors and long-term provenance in mind.
You can hear me talk about the work and my background as a “CryptoArt OG” in the interview for the Sotheby’s Catalogue below. Read on for more in-depth information about the artwork and my journey.
THE WORK
Self Transcending is a vision of the Self as a Strange Loop – a narrative that reiterates itself into infinity. Every new Self informs the next, and it’s up to us to establish harmony within the chaos. The piece is unique within my oeuvre, as it fuses my signature VideoPainting technique with analog feedback – an evolution of my style befitting this moment in my career.
I see this concept as a continuation of a personal revelation I had in 2019, around the time I first started editioning my work as NFTs on the blockchain. I was reading a book about mushrooms, and the “wood wide web” they create with their mycelium – essentially a mesh network that allows interspecies communication in a forest.
I was struck by a vision of the Internet as the extension of the human nervous system, and the human nervous system as an extension of the mycelial networks of the natural world.
Self Transcending continues many of the cyberdelic themes that weave throughout my VideoPaintings. The chakra-like motif I use to indicate inner harmony connects the work directly to Astral Antenna, the first VideoPainting I tokenized in March of 2020, which was collected by fellow “Natively Digital” artist Matt Kane.
Where Astral Antenna depicts inner harmony as a means of becoming a receiver, Self Transcending depicts that inner harmony as a means of broadcast – they reflect the yin and yang of transcendent experience.
As I see it, we’re living in a very potent time in human history, where we’re redefining our notions of humanity as we merge with our technology. This can often be strange and uncomfortable, and societal growing pains are not uncommon. But a more zoomed out perspective allows us to see how we’re extending beyond ourselves, bursting through our borders of separation to connect with each other, like nodes in a network.
The natural impulse to weave into an interdependent organism can be met with a lot of resistance, as it requires us to recalibrate the scale with which we view ourselves. But, when we engage with the Internet– our Ancient form of Future technology– we get glimpses of how we fit into this fractal reality.
For the past decade, I have been creating art in dialogue with the Internet. I beam my techno-mystical TV broadcasts into the ether as a means of illuminating this massive step we’re taking as a civilization.
I can trace much of my fascination with this topic to Michio Kaku’s talks on the Kuleshov scale. Recognizing our experience as the birth pains of a new planetary civilization contextualizes the push-pull we feel between regressive and progressive forces in contemporary culture.
I offer the video below as it was a direct inspiration for my body of work leading up to the creation of Self Transcending.
THE JOURNEY
I minted my first NFT on SuperRare on April 4, 2019. While that’s not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, it puts me on the earlier side of entry into the NFT space, and has led to me being oft referred to as an “OG” Crypto Artist. But that was not the beginning of my journey as an artist.
I have felt compelled to create art since I was a child, and was fortunate to have access to a computer as a toddler, which was somewhat uncommon at the time. I have told the story in various interviews of how, at 10, I had an art teacher who told me that Art made on a computer wasn’t real Art, and she forbade me from ever using a computer in my assignments.
I switched my focus from Art to Drama, a choice that I carried through my entire Academic career through the end of my MFA in Dramatic Writing.
This decision to never study Art academically has been one of the greatest gifts I could give myself. I am an autodidact by nature, and I developed my own approach to creative practice over the years, educating myself from the wealth of information available on the Internet.
At the age of 15, I took up film photography, and it was my primary mode of expression for the next decade. I posted on various film photography forums as “thesarahshow,” and enriched myself through that rich pre-social media online community.
I sold my Art for the first time at the age of 18, when several of my photographs were licensed for a French book about the photography movement I was part of, called Le Lomo: L’Appareil Photo qui ose tout!
Self as Odalisque, 2006.
I worked as Interim Curator at The Joseph Saxton Gallery of Photography in 2011, which is where I learned a great deal about Fine Art Editions and the Art market. We had works by legendary photographers like Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz and Diane Arbus on offer there, and I acquainted myself with the processes by which valuable artworks were bought and sold while creating my own run of limited edition prints.
One day, a customer came in off the street and said they had seen a print through the window and they absolutely had to have it. I was beyond delighted to discover that the print was one of mine – The Rainbow News. It was an exhilarating moment for me, as I realized I had developed my craft to the point that a complete stranger wished to place value in my work.
The Rainbow News. Sarah Zucker, 2009.
I started moving into video and time-based media in 2011. I had shot lots of interesting footage over the years as a street photographer, and began incorporating that with found footage in creating visuals for bands. I began working more and more in the GIF format, and it became the primary focus of my practice around2013.
From 2013-2016 I released work under the banner of my collaborative studio The Current Sea. We produced an audiovisual show in Los Angeles called Prism Pipe, which showcased many of the emerging GIF and New Media Artists of the era, many of whom are now making moves in the NFT space.
In 2015, we spoke with The Creators Project about “The Future of GIFs as Gallery Art,” where I mused on the potential for GIFs to be taken seriously as fine art if they could be editioned on the blockchain. 🤯
The Future Of GIFs As Gallery Art, According To The Current Sea http://t.co/OhSjsN18GE pic.twitter.com/ardkM9Uymt
— Creators (@CreatorsProject) March 11, 2014
I began working with Analog Video in 2015 and returned to releasing my work under my own name / @thesarahshow.
Being consistent in my output and always experimenting with new techniques, I developed my own signature aesthetic over the years, and cultivated a wide community of followers for my work through Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook and Giphy – where my GIFs currently have over 6.6 billion views.
When I became aware of SuperRare in 2019, it felt like destiny. My Art and experiences made me uniquely suited to the Crypto Art space, and I hit the ground running. I continue to evolve my practice organically in conversation with the Metaverse and its denizens, and feel electric with the possibilities that lie ahead.
I am thrilled to be able to offer my work at Sotheby’s as part of their first curated NFT sale. This is a watershed moment for digital art, as this new technology is finally allowing this longstanding and potent cultural tradition to get its due in the greater world of Fine Art.
All my thanks to curator Robert Alice for including me, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Specialist Michael Bouhanna for organizing the sale, and my greatest respect to the incredible artists offering their work alongside mine.
View and Bid on my Work on the Sotheby’s Website
In case you’d like to digest everything I said here in Dance Music form, I leave you with the incredible “Sarah Zucker Remix” by Eclectic Method. 😎
