Gearing up for the upcoming 115th National Day in the country, one of the programmes that is underway to mark the celebration is the nationwide art competition. Themed “An Extraordinary Nation,” 10 winning art entries will be given nationally recognised Non-fungible tokens or NFTs.
Initiated as part of the National Day build up programme, the nationwide art competition focuses on youth, technology and entrepreneurship. It is being held to garner global audience for the Bhutanese artists and showcase Bhutanese artworks at the international platform.
“We thought this would also be an excellent opportunity to showcase talent we have in Bhutan. And also we thought to educate our artists who are very talented but not so familiar with the evolution of technology,” said Jigme Tenzing, Director of Department of Information Technology and Telecom (DITT) under the Ministry of Information and Communications.
Commenting further, he said the art competition is intended to familiarise Bhutanese artists on Non-fungible tokens. The NFT is a digital identifier, which can protect individual art piece from being copied or duplicated.
“You have a digital ledger, an immutable ledger, something that cannot be changed easily, which has a record of ownership and therefore, that individual would only have the authority or right to make use of that digital art,” continued the Director of DITT.
Some seasoned artists from VAST Bhutan, a civil society organisation working towards promotion of art in the country, are looking forward to the art competition.
“I am very much excited for this art competition and I am working on a painting of the national flower, blue poppy. I am going to present it for the nationwide art competition,” said one of the artists from VAST Bhutan, Jharna Monger.
“I am looking forward to participating in the art competition to celebrate the National Day. My artwork is a painting of Mahakala. I witnessed the mask dance in the Thimphu Drubchen and drew inspiration from there,” added Dorji Wangdi, who is a volunteer artist at VAST Bhutan.
The nationwide art competition, which began on 27 November, is accepting entries until 25 December.
Tashi Yangden
Edited by Pema Lhaden
