Kristen Visbal, creator of the iconic Fearless Girl bronze statue in the Wall Street section of New York City, has announced the launch of an NFT collection with the first drop on May 10. The launch marks the first virtual rendering of the sculpture, a work symbolizing gender equality which has inspired millions. Visbal has paired up with digital art house 9ifx.net to bring her storyboards to life and will release 226 NFTs, including a single copy of a micro movie, paired with the first private placement of a full sized Fearless Girl statue. The reserve price of each NFT is 0.20 ETH (around $500).
The well-known statue, which was unveiled on International Women’s Day in 2017, is of a young girl with a determined stance and her hands on her hips who looks up to the sky, seemingly ready to take on the world. The NFT release – titled “Superstar Drop: Free Fearless Girl” – brings this symbol of equality to life in an entirely new format, believes the creator of Fearless Girl, taking on the virtual world and presenting a new era of empowerment in the digital age. “Many have asked for a feasible Fearless Girl collectible. NFTs are the solution, offering a little piece of Fearless Girl as moving art! Fearless Girl symbolizes the call for gender equality in the workplace and is seen by millions each day,” says Kristen Visbal, Fearless Girl creator. “Now that she’s entering the virtual world, women across the country and around the world can carry their own fearless girl with them each day,” she adds.
The collection features a three-tiered limited edition collectibles drop and artistically depicts the figure as a universal being who evolves from celestial matter. Tier One combines an NFT short movie with a full size physical statue of Fearless Girl. Tier Two includes an NFT video showing a fiery Fearless Girl originating from a comet and is paired with a 22” physical bronze miniature. Tier Three presents seven NFT trading cards with various views of Fearless Girl highlighted over a moving background of vivid nebulae. The first drop of the collection will be from tier two, being auctioned off on OpenSea beginning on May 10, with tier three and one dropping later in May.
The goal of these NFTs is to inspire and empower women but, like so many others, these digital artworks also seek to entice women into the burgeoning financial arena of Web3. The big difference, however, is that proceeds will fuel the artist’s fight to free her work to benefit the public. Thus far, her efforts have been thwarted by a legal dispute waged more than three years ago. Since unveiling, the equality ideals behind Fearless Girl have been replaced with a narrow call for board diversity and the broad messages of equality, equal pay, empowerment, education, education against prejudice and the general well-being of women have been obstructed, forgotten. Even the sign down the street from the New York casting omits them. Visbal’s intent is to reinstate the integrity of Fearless Girl by re-aligning the figure with her ideals, a pledge to integrity she made in 2017.
The proceeds from the NFT sale will support Visbal’s efforts to “free Fearless Girl” from the physical world and re-align the sculpture with the equality ideals behind her.
