Why Damien Hirst burned his artwork

STORY: Why is Damien Hirst burning his artwork?

The British artist gave collectors a choice:

to purchase the physical artworks from his collection ‘The Currency’

or keep their corresponding digital non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

Hirst then destroyed the physical artworks that were picked as NFTs

(Artist, Damien Hirst) “I decided that once I gave people the opportunity to choose between physical and digital art, I had to decide what to do with the physical for all the people who chose digital so that was the point when I realised I had to destroy it. And when we created the NFTs we burned them into existence so it made sense to remove the physicals through burning them into non-existence.”

“I think this has to be part of the process to create truly digital artworks is to destroy the physical artwork. The two can’t exist at the same time.”

Out of Hirst's 10,000 artworks, collectors picked 5,149 physical pieces

while 4,851 opted for the NFTs, according to London's Newport Street Gallery

"For me, I just think that digital art is becoming art. I don’t really think there’s a choice…We live in a world where there are people who like digital and physical art, it’s not traditional it’s physical so it’s like physical art versus digital art. But we live in a world where digital art now exists and I think it’s just all art. And I like art, digital and physical for different reasons.”