The Toronto Comic Arts Festival boots NFT artist: ‘We made a mistake’

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. Tuesday’s announcement by TCAF clarified her original intent behind the invitation and said that Moeel was not being invited.

Pink Cat’s featured guest status immediately raised eyebrows in the artist community. It is rare to have a comics festival that highlights an artist who deals with NFTs. NFTs were viewed as an attack on the profession by many members of the arts industry when they first became a popular 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.

Moel’s controversy grew when users of social media searched her online past to uncover more. a history of tracing artwork, tweets disparaging community artists, appropriating Black culture for profitAnd transphobic remarks. Polygon reached Moel by Twitter and asked her for comments. She replied with this message.

Yes, these men invited me to decline their invitation. These guys paid me for my flight and hotel, but I had no idea who they were. This is very bizarre

This isn’t my world, I’m a real life artist I don’t care about organizations or trade shows, I have my own following it’s not a cult following it’s mainstream. The LA times called me the Gen Z Garfield, we aren’t in the same league.

The backlask against Moeel’s TCAF invitation continued through Memorial Day. On Monday, the festival’s official account tweeted, “The TCAF executive and organizers have heard your valid concerns and we are working on a statement. Thank you for your patience while we prepare a response.” On Tuesday, that statement was released. The statement reads:

TCAF originally extended a programming invitation for Moel based on their daily digital comics work via Instagram and the importance of the work to one of our staff members. At the time of this invitation, the organization was unaware of Moeel’s online conduct, plagiarism, or allegations of tracing. We are sorry for programming this artist and encouraging him.

We made a mistake. This is our promise to our community. We will learn from our mistakes and reevaluate the controls and checks we use to make programming decisions.

Further, the statement clarifies that the board does not have any financial connections to Moel such as her purchase of NFTs. The statement concludes, “We are very proud of the line-up of artists and exhibitors we have gathered for this year’s festival, and it is our sincere hope that this error on our part does not overshadow the hard work of our team, our other guests, and our exhibitors.”