The mesmerizing four-piece talisman is the first NFT collection from an Amazonian-born artist. Each piece will be auctioned off individually starting at 8:00 PM UTC.
Amazonian-born digital artist Alma Leon Rego recently announced the release of her first nonfungible token (NFT) collection, a four-piece talisman known as “Octecko.” Each piece of art in the collection will be auctioned on Foundation’s platform on Nov. 8 at 8:00 pm UTC.
Rego designed Octecko as a complete set, which one can arrange to form the eye of either a gecko or an octopus. According to her, these eyes are meant to embody the specific virtues associated with the animals being portrayed. In terms of the Gecko, that virtue is resilience. For the octopus, it is a combination of skill and adaptability.
The artist says that she wants spectators to gain a “sense of empowerment” through the contemplation of her work and hopes that the final owner of all four pieces will continue to rearrange the NFTs in accordance with their evolving lives.
However, collecting all four pieces will not be so easy a feat since each will be auctioned off both individually and simultaneously. This is on purpose, of course, with Rego claiming that she wants the four pieces to each experience their own journey towards one final destination. According to her, once each section of the work is combined by the rightful owner, the “force of the talisman will awaken.”
Of course, there are other benefits to being the final “master” of the Octecko set. For instance, once all four pieces are in one person’s possession, that individual will have the right to be airdropped the complete NFTs of the Octecko:
One as an Octopus and one as a Gecko, giving them full control of this experience.
Octecko has already garnered a lot of buzz throughout the NFT community, and through Foundation, Rego is hopeful that the auctions will draw some of the finest art collectors.
Octecko as “an experience”
Much of Alma Leon Rego’s work focuses on the eyes, particularly those of animals. This is important for many reasons, as Rego herself has heterochromia, a condition that causes one’s eyes to be different colors. According to her, much of her work focuses on “bridging the gap” between humankind and their “mystic past.” Indeed, she typically divides her paintings into multiple pieces so that the viewer will receive a completely different impression depending on their arrangement.
Rego’s paintings are much more than mere art. As living talismans, she wants them to be an experience as well. “A Talisman is an object imbued with power,” she says. “It charges the holder with the energy and allows them to wield it. I intend to imbue my pictures with this energy and allow other people to be granted this power.”
Rego is a regular practitioner of deep meditation as well as a former user of Ayahuasca — a psychoactive tea used by many South and Central American tribes. She claims to be most creative when “looking at the void…when one’s mind is free to contemplate, the black within it starts regurgitating colors, images, and ideas.” In the case of Octecko, Rego wants the experience to be a “dive into one’s self,” allowing the viewers to “feel the intersection between chaos and order, skill and adaptability, resilience and change.”
If the auction is successful, Rego says she will continue to make NFTs whenever she feels called to do so. “I have never been skilled at selling myself and become withdrawn when it comes to it,” she says. “This is a way to put a virtual barrier between me and my work and allow my promoters to work without my interference.”
About Alma Leon Rego
Alma was born in 1989 in a small fishing village near Leticia, in the Amazonian region. As a child, she discovered that she perceived the world as far different from how others saw it. This was aided by the fact that she frequently participated in shamanistic rituals in which she drank Ayahuasca, a psychoactive tea.
