"IDENTITY" BY DMITRI ASKE

In 2003, Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg launched a website called "Facemash" which was later turned into Facebook. Over the years it became one of the largest online social media platforms with billions of users all around the globe. Facebook and other social media replaced anonymity on the web with distorted publicity. A person in real-life communication is not the one he appears to be on social networks. We exist in a "mosaic culture", surrounded by a "digital fog" so we fail to piece together our own picture of the world. Excessive quantities of information constantly overload our attention. It prevents us from thinking and concentrating on our inner space. It stands in the way of achieving our goals and fractures the road that we take for our lifetime journey.

Dmitri Aske reproduces the fragmentary and mosaic reality in wooden reliefs, resembling mosaics of the Soviet era. Using photographs and screenshots he creates digital sketches and transfers them into his artworks. His murals could be found on 54-meter residential buildings, train stations halls and many other huge walls all across the world. With the help of blockchain technology, Aske’s "Identity" is transformed from a temporary to permanent state after it is archived and preserved forever in the form of NFT. This is how the artwork about a digital reality 2.0 is upgraded into digital reality 3.0 four years after it was initially created by the artist in Moscow.