Toronto comics festival boots NFT artist after intense backlash: ‘We made a mistake’

polygon.com:

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is one of the most prestigious events for artists in Canada, and it’s also one of the largest festivals in the world dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of comics — and only comics. But TCAF is at the center of a firestorm of controversy after announcing that NFT artist Pink Cat, also known as Saba Moeel, would be one of the festival’s featured guests. On Tuesday, TCAF announced that they are uninviting Moeel, and clarified the original intentions behind her invitation.

Pink Cat’s featured guest status immediately raised eyebrows in the artist community. A comics festival highlighting an artist who primarily deals with NFTs is unusual to start. Many members of the arts community considered NFTs an assault on their profession when they initially took off as a trend. As time has passed and expensive apes have been snagged from their owners’ accounts, the technical and ethical issues with these tokens have become increasingly clear.

<a href=«https://twitter.com/hashtag/TCAF?src=hash&ref_src=» https: www.polygon.com>#TCAF

welcomes PINK CAT <a href=«https://twitter.com/PINKCATDAILY?ref_src=» https: www.polygon.com>@pinkcatdaily as a featured guest for 2022! Read her bio here: https://t.co/1DZmDFGqSk (4/7) pic.twitter.com/OeTXWebUtp

The controversy around Moeel intensified when social media users went through her online history to find a history of tracing artwork, tweets disparaging community artists, appropriating Black culture for profit, and transphobic remarks. Polygon contacted Moeel for comment via Twitter; she replied with the following message.

Yeah these guys invited me to disinvite me. They payed flight hotel etc, i didnt even know who they were. Very weird

This isn’t my