Frauds Keep Selling This South Korean Artist’s Surrealist Erotica as Scam NFTs

Every morning, Joyce Lee says, she is afraid to check her Instagram DMs “because I might read from someone that my art was stolen again. This kind of art theft will never disappear as long as I keep creating art.”

While most of us have been baffled by what, exactly, NFTs are, for South Korean artist Joyce Lee, the rise of non-fungible tokens has been less a mystery than a threat. Over the past several months, her works of bubblegum-fantasy-pop-surrealist-erotica has been repeatedly stolen by NFT scammers who snatch screengrabs, alter them to some degree, then attempt to pass them off as their own. Now she’s engaged in what is tantamount to an ongoing game of digital whack-a-mole.

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“Almost every day I receive direct messages from my followers notifying me that my artwork was used or monetized without my consent,” Lee explained via email from Seoul, where she’s currently exhibiting at Moowoosoo Gallery. “In most cases, I tell them to just forget about it and ignore them because I don't want to waste my time fighting with people online. Reacting to each case is too stressful.”

The enormity of one theft, however, forced her to take action.

“The scammer uploaded almost 100 pieces of my artwork at OpenSea and Rarible—which are the biggest NFT platforms—and was trying earning money. I could not concentrate on making my art at all and felt super nervous,” Lee said. “I had to get help from my IG followers to solve the problem ASAP and get back to my routine. Thanks to my followers’ support, two platforms took down the scammer’s account. Rarible didn’t respond to any of my official reporting at the help center on the site. Fortunately a follower of mine was a close acquaintance of a Rarible founder and let me know his personal IG handle. I sent him DM directly and the account was taken down immediately.”

All of this is a very new take on an old problem. Forgery and art fraud goes back to the Renaissance, and even the great Michelangelo once doctored a painting in order to pass it off as ancient and increase its value. (He was found out but got to keep the money.) But armies of IG followers coming to bat against global NFT platforms? Things have gotten decidedly 21st century.

In a nutshell, an NFT is a piece of digital data that is distributed across a global network called a “blockchain.” Unlike interchangeable blockchain products like cryptocurrencies, NFTs are uniquely identifiable and theoretically owned by a single person, though the NFT data itself can be shared and viewed by pretty much anyone. If this vague sense of ownership leaves you wondering why someone would want to pay so damn much money for it)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mailtrack.io/trace/link/e375ab4a64b2ac0dd3a2a66ad614fa9892d7ef7f?url=https*3A*2F*2Fwww.thedailybeast.com*2Fwhy-the-hell-would-someone-pay-dollar69m-for-an-nft-by-beeple&userId=2235490&signature=46f543778713f23f__;JSUlJQ!!LsXw!VFvQ1BCFvwxZ3aJMKGl4smaNnbaHARXw-_43ufdBco75gkA-rYvrkVac0DEuGusy_CQ0L2AUi3VWl664XnIpjbsHwg$">why someone would want to pay so damn much money for it, it’s a little more clear why someone would steal art and attempt it to pass it off as their own NFT: there’s big money in it. The NFT art market exploded to a valuation of $22 billion in 2021—up from $100 million the year before.

It’s precisely this high price tag that separates NFT art theft from previous forms of digital art piracy.

At a glance, it would be easy to compare this situation to back when Napster brought about the turn-of-the-millennium boom of digital music theft. The difference, however, is in the money and the impact. Music fans Napstering up the latest Sugar Ray or Brian McKnight jams weren’t making any money from it, and music sharing benefitted smaller artists who suddenly found eager online communities. NFT art scammers, on the other hand, are directly profiting off the art of others, and there seems to be little to no benefit to the artists themselves.

Joyce Lee, for example, built her following by offering her uniquely titillating art directly to her audience. It’s hard to imagine that she’s garnered any boost in recognition from stolen NFT art that doesn’t even attempt to credit her work.

“My income is mostly from making and selling original artworks and prints,” Lee explained. “But I cannot concentrate on making my art while dealing with these [NFT theft] issues. To artists, the time for creating something means a lot for the potential income, so they definitely hurt my income.”

As of now, there is little artists like Lee can do to protect themselves from theft.

“I don’t have any perfect way to stop the NFT scams. Before experiencing NFT art theft, I’d always put my small signature at the corner space of my artwork because I wanted to show my art with the best quality. But since the horrible happening, I have been putting my signature inside the main objects in my artworks to make it harder for scammers erase it. And it’s almost impossible to prevent them. They will erase all watermarks inside the artworks, transform them with some graphic filters, and sell them as if they were newly re-created by them.”

In an ironic way, Lee’s surreal erotica is thematically perfect for NFT thievery.

Since its inception, the Surrealist movement has held a simultaneous fascination and abhorrence toward technology, leveraging the latest tech tools to expand the horizons of artistic experience, yet often leveling the accusation or at least implying that we are living in a technological dystopia. Lee’s work leans hard into surrealist imagery, and it’s drawn her onto our current dystopia’s leading edge.

At the same time, the erotic elements of Lee’s work—which takes a playful, almost taunting look at sex and taboo—make it a prime target for internet thieves, because, well… it’s the internet. The internet has a storied history of doing great and terrible things to erotica. It’s no wonder that Lee’s eye-catching artwork would seem an enticing honeypot for NFT scammers.

“It’s really hard to describe it,” Lee said of her work, “because I just draw what comes into my mind each time, even without any practical purpose. I rather want to hear how people define my art in the future. I really enjoy exploring the humanistic and humorous aspects of love and sexuality through the symbolism of the human body, especially woman’s, sometimes in provocative ways. I want people to get excited, blush, and imagine something more by seeing my art. And I want to think of myself as someone who dares to show something that most of them are thinking but would never express.

“One thing is clear: Women inside my art are far from being shy. They never hesitate to express their feelings by using their whole body. I see beautiful girls inside many Korean artists’ works who look very shy and even sad. Girls in my art are different from them. My intention with my art wasn’t to show woman power or feminism, but it’s been very rewarding to see that my work has had this effect.”

Beyond the erotic, the other key characteristic of Lee’s art—surrealism—has also helped it find an eager audience.

“People of our time always feel trapped in a tough reality and have desire to escape from it,” Lee said. “We often want to have some time alone to heal and nurture ourselves. Literature or art which deal with surrealism help us. They make us travel to another world where we don’t feel stressed. I have always enjoyed imagining what it would be like to live in a world that existed beyond reality, and the concept of “parallel realities” is expressed both the content and form of my art. You can easily observe combinations of disparate times and spaces or the presence of unusual objects in my work.

“The pandemic has forced all of us all to turn inwards, but the extra amount of time isolated at home has provided me with more artistic inspiration. My followers on Instagram have sent me a lot of DM saying things like, ‘Your art has really helped me get through all the depressing news lately. Thank you!’ My intention with my art wasn’t to offer an escape for others, but it’s been very rewarding to see that my work has had this effect.”

One of the parallel realities that most of us exist in every day—the internet—will continue to pose new challenges for artists.

“There will be more and more digital artworks than traditional hand-made artworks, but the problem is that for now they all look same because the digital artists use same graphic software,” Lee said. “Only a few artists with special and unique charm will survive.”

Lee’s work is primarily created using watercolors and colored pencils on paper, lending a distinctly classic vibe to her digital presence. While she sells hard copies of her work via her online store, and while her pieces are displayed in galleries and spaces all over the world, Lee’s art primarily resides on the internet where the battle for ownership rages on.

“Most artists are not trained technicians in the cyber security field,” Lee said. “We will never find the perfect means of preventing NFT theft because most NFT scammers are better in the field than us. NFT platforms should invent some new effective ways of protecting artists inside their website. Without their effort for artists’ rights and safety, artists will never be able to survive long enough to make success.”