By Dušanka Seratlić

When we set out to create an inclusive collection of 5,000 profile pictures representing womxn all over the world, we knew we had to find an artist who shared our mission.

Enter Kiri, who the Surge team met during Kernel KB4. 

As an artist, Kiri has been mainly focused on exploring portraiture in traditional media. The Surge Passport NFT collection is her first foray into digital art and identity.

Dive right in to learn more about her style, experience, and inspiration behind the Surge PFP collection.

From Finger Painting to Photoshop

Kiri has been drawing since she was five years old. During the years, she attended different art workshops, but she is largely self-taught. 

Before the Surge collection, she had never really done anything digital. Her media of choice had always been charcoal, acrylic, oil, and printmaking. It’s that traditional approach to art that she brings to Surge as well. 

The Surge collection is her first time diving deep into digital art. Kiri had done some Photoshop work before, but never this elaborate. The Surge collection is also her first time exploring generative art and working with engineers to develop her aesthetic.  

Stepping into the world of NFT art

“I joined Kernel because I was interested in this new internet, I wanted to explore Web3 as an artist who’s mainly worked in physical, traditional media. Then I met Denise, who had a mission that resonated with me, which is the empowerment of women. 

Although I never did digital art, let alone an NFT collection, I showed Denise my sculptures, paintings, and drawings. It turned out my style was exactly what Surge was looking for.”

In the sea of overly polished digital PFPs, Kiri’s free and playful linework looked like a breath of fresh air. The Surge collection was meant to inspire women to embrace their identity and power in Web3, and we felt that coloring outside the lines embodied that spirit perfectly. 

Kiri felt it was important to retain the aesthetics of traditional art even as she made the jump to digital. There is a lot of beauty in makeshift lines and traces and imprints that speak to the artistic process. 

Kiri wanted to develop a style that takes the best of both worlds: the iterative qualities of generative art that allow for a wealth of different features and combinations and the sense of journey, uniqueness, and freedom found in traditional art styles. 

Beyond her art style, there was another reason Kiri turned out to be such a great match for the Surge collection… 

Self-Portraits as a Form of Empowerment: Reclaiming Your Identity

For Kiri, inspiration is found in the acute observation of things that surround her. She finds beauty in observing light and the way things catch, reflect, and change with it. But, for Kiri, the most fascinating subject is human faces. 

“I feel a lot of wonder at the beauty of people and I think a lot of this for me is embodied through facial features.”

Her artwork has always been an exploration of humanity and a tool that helped her learn more about herself. As a descendant of immigrants in the US, she has always struggled to feel a sense of belonging. 

Early on, she understood that the ways in which her face is marked by race and gender inform the interactions she has with others. Kiri used her art to confront the sense of alienation that comes with stereotypes based on facial features that were somehow ‘othered’ in her environment. 

This journey of self-exploration started as she was learning how to draw. The models were always ancient Greek or Roman sculptures, and she didn’t share many features with these representations. At some point, she realized she didn’t really know how to draw her own face - her models never looked like her. 

So, the big part of her artistic practice was to unlearn the societal models and learn how to see beauty in her own face. As this process began, Kiri started learning how to look for beauty in the faces of different races and ethnic groups. 

Through his practice, she also started unpacking her own internalized self-hate and racism. Finally, she was able to find and capture the beauty in her own face and identity. In that way, her artistic practice functioned as a form of healing and self-empowerment. This is what she hoped to embody in the Surge collection as well.

Every Face Has a Story to Tell

One of the things Kiri wanted to challenge is the tendency to create PFPs that are as universal as possible. With the idea that everyone should recognize themselves in each PFP, collections tend to shy away from specificity. 

Through her research, Kiri understood that it was nearly impossible to create a universal image of a face. What she wanted to create was a collection that delved into the specificity of different features: whether they were inherent or chosen. 

The Surge collection is meant to be an intimate examination of different identities that gives its owners a sense of connection that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how you look.  

It’s beautiful to mint a PFP that looks like you, but Kiri wanted this collection to embody all our differences and commonalities. She wants us to resonate with the Surge PFPs on a level that encompasses the totality of the collection. The idea is to connect with the sense of community rooted in female empowerment while celebrating faces of all kinds - the ones that look like us and the ones that don’t.

What Does It Mean to Be an NFT Artist?

Kiri joined Kernel because she wanted to explore the ideas behind Web3. As an artist, she is interested in the ways technology can be used to improve the quality of people’s lives. Through her experience in Kernel and working with Surge women, she understood that accessibility is key to positive change. 

That’s part of the reason why the Surge mission resonated with her so much: Kiri believes that increasing access to new technologies is crucial if we truly want to build a better web. 

“No matter how efficient or useful or good technology is, it ultimately devolves into something intrinsically hierarchical and unequal when people don't have equal access to it. Progress is not just about the best software, it’s about making sure that disadvantaged people know how to use tech, that they feel this progress is readily accessible and open to them.”

Kiri is hopeful about the ways the NFT space can prove useful to artists. As a student, working with Surge has proven to be almost life-changing: from all that she learned to the material impact that it had on her life. Financial empowerment is important and Kiri is looking forward to seeing more artists working with NFT projects that appreciate the work and creative direction of artists who shape their collections.   

The Message Behind the Surge Passport NFT Collection

Ultimately, Kiri hopes that the Surge collection can start meaningful conversations around identity and the way we choose to represent who we are in the increasingly digital world. 

For her, portraits are a form of self-empowerment. She hopes that Surge PFPs will become a lens for people to better understand, relate, connect, love, and appreciate their own identity, as well as the identity of others. 

The Surge Passport NFT collection is designed to combine perks and utility with beautiful and thoughtful aesthetics that reflect our collective identity as womxn in Web3. We want these faces to become symbolic of accessibility, openness, and community and we hope you feel the same!

For more info on minting the Surge Passport NFT, check out our Discord and Twitter.