https://nftshowroom.com/nahupuku/gallery
Nahu Puku is a living NFT if there ever was. I wanted to interview him for a number of reasons, He has been in the art scene long before the digital age, and he has a story to tell about his experiences living in. Caracas, Venezuela. Let's jump straight to the interview.
Without magnifying the suffering of the People of Venezuela which I have extreme empathy for, Does the extreme economic depression influences or plays a centerpiece in your art?
Nahu Puku: "First of all, Im VERY grateful for the opportunity to express myself in these lines, it is very important for us, content creators and artists to be read and to be able to express ourselves, this country Venezuela, beautiful land by the way, currently suffers unfavorable conditions on many levels, and precisely the creation of art has helped me to heal and cope with every situation prevailing in this chaos, to live with dignity sharing my material on the network and in turn inspiring me, yes, because chaos can also generate art, it is not easy to create when the difficulties are often immense but I have never let alternate situations affect me, I think that by discovering the decentralized blockchain I have been able to find a home, a magical world where I have been able to inspire me and manage to eat weekly, that is something that in previous years and in full crisis of the country was almost impossible, literally, I have created real plastic works like the one titled "Hungry", Hungry that express that feeling quite well. I have few works that reflect that reality in terms of plastic or digital art, then it does not play such a relevant role in terms of the final process, I have known how to create creative worlds for myself, but it has been a weighty factor when creating."
Hungry (2020) - Inspired by an autobiographical event I lived in between 2006 and 2017: https://www.instagram.com/p/CNMcbMvDyhK/ 2.
Let the NFT Community know more about the event you held at an Art Gallery in Caracas where you and another NFT Artist on Hive gave a real recent presentation about "Crypto Art" and NFT's. Does Caracas have an art community you are trying to bring into the Digital Age?
Nahu Puku: "Yes, thanks for asking, the event was really made entirely by several artists from the digital world and the world of conventional visual arts, which are opening their minds and hearts to understand this world of us, the crypto artists, by coincidence of life, that particular art gallery where the event was held belongs to some relatives who are artists, my cousin is a painter and there was that meeting. The great Eva Cortez 
You have a hot concept where someone can buy the NFT of their tattoo's you design. Tell us more about this unique business.
Nahu Puku: "Since the 90s, specifically from 1995 to date I have been linked in my country to the world of tattoo and piercings, I started very early, let's say I belong to the second generation of body modification artists, I started on my own, then I was working in several stores (some well known tattoo shops, as well as attended several international tattoo festivals and expo tattoo, In the first one, held in 2002 I won a first place with the store where I worked in the area of piercings), and then I wanted to expand my horizons by creating my first tattoo studio in 2013 and with comings and goings I could
consolidate in 2016 my tattoo studio as a physical place, being Shamanas Tattoo Studio the name chosen for my studio, in order to honor women artists and tattoo artists, and give them a space, I
always wanted to be at the forefront so it was the first studio in my country where the staff was purely made up of women artists, it is also the first studio to receive all kinds of cryptocurrencies to perform tattoos, and is also currently developing a project called "Human Canvas" where the human body is the physical space where the client will always have his NFT piece acquired, I have the first one
in fact, a tattoo of my work "DinoPuku" which you can see in my gallery NFTShowroom, and is based on the comic of the same name which I made between 2000 to 2003 as a comic, clothing, stickers and other
accessories, as well as digital art. Also my tattoo studio is the headquarters of my foundation of charity aid through cryptos for Venezuelans in complicated situations."
DinoPuku tattoo link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/COWi7xOpojb/
My idea is that the client gets a triple work (if he wants), a printed work (in a 3D printer), the digital work that he will acquire through the valid purchase of it, and a tattoo, I am involving 4 artists that
I know, colleagues from years ago, and guiding them to create their profiles in Hive and NFTShowroom, teaching them how to manage the wallets so that they upload their artwork and designs to the platform and the client simply chooses their favorite and gets it tattooed, guaranteeing to have a unique work of art on their skin, and everyone wins, the artist designer, the client and the tattoo studio. Several of these artists are currently out of the country (two in Chile, one in Mexico) and two of us are still in Venezuela, and their artistic careers are also as in my case since the 90s."
You have been in the Art Community since the 80's. How does the digital art community differ in comparison to the Old School Artist's taking paint to a canvas?
Nahu Puku: "Well because I have been in basically all worlds: video art, music,sculpture, performance, installations, collage, painting, photography
and printmaking, having studied in the 80s and 90s at the Caracas Beaux Arts Museum, and then at the universities of Art: Cristobal Rojas and the Central University of Venezuela, I can say that the
difference is only the support of the material, since the passion, creativity, interest in building new worlds and curiosity are hand in hand in both methods of artistic creation, in my case the difference could also be more than all generational and the speed of sale of works. What I do see different and as something really wonderful is
the system of galleries and support of artists of any age or trend, now it is much easier to be taken into account, disseminate the work, sell it, share it and even reform it, by technological means, then it
is something that the old artists find it a little more difficult to adapt or approach this world of crypto art, but considering that, basically all have nowadays digital portfolios or their pieces on
Instagram, it will not be difficult for them to transition. In my case as a researcher of the visual arts and university professor in that area I have sought to combine and merge many aspects so for me it is the same a brushstroke, a digital stroke, music as a sound brush or a song that generates a work of abstract art, which is the next project in which I got involved successfully."
Caracas Chaotic Hell City: by Nahu Puku
Tell us the personal story behind your NFT titled,
"Caracas Chaotic Hell City"?
Nahu Puku: "As the title refers, this series is based on my experiences in this chaotic city: hell and paradise, love and hate, to see through my window beautiful sunsets while in the streets you can live a tense, calm, police repression, ultraviolence or in some cases without medicines or food or any barbarism's make it an atypical space, and therefore reminds me a lot of movies like MadMax and Bladerunner, I love dystopias and what better example than living in a space like this, so I nurture this city and its colors that, by the way, remind me a lot of those steam, darknoir, glitch and cyberpunk aesthetics, Caracas is basically that and that's what I try to reflect in my work. I hate living here and at the same time I love living here."
What does an NFT mean to you?
Nahu Puku: "First it means a great joy, to finally have a voice, in the digital world, when I created my first works before 1998, I did not really think that I would ever be taken into account, I luckily, I have saved those first works, created in MS Paint of Windows 95, created on my IBM 286xp, inspired by Pollock, Kandinsky and Baskiat, at that time there was no .jpg file extension so they were recorded on 3.1 diskettes in the format of the time the BMP.
Secondly I have always loved the world of collecting, I have a whole album of NBA decks, I collect Aliens toys figures, and any curious thing that exists and I can afford, my house / workshop is really a
mini-museum, then the NFT also allows me that, besides expressing myself, start collecting digital art that I like, so far I have already bought my first NFT - video artwork: MeKaNo 9000, from another Venezuelan artist (
What would you like the Hive Community to know about you as an artist?
Nahu Puku: "That my art is honest, is an expression of my own being and is authentic, and that it expresses a lot of pain, suffering, joy, love, creativity, I'm not doing works for the sake of doing them or because it is fashionable, I'm making thoughtful pieces, with concept, if they have some effects or applications of various apps, but basically many of them are still made with manual methods, lenses, magnifying glasses, and then I've been adding layers and lots and lots of work, counting that I still work with very old equipment almost rudimentary, my laptop is from 2006 - Windows 7 (until recently I used XP) as well as a 2 gigabyte hard disk space and 2 of ram, to render and store the works created is an eternity. There is a lot of effort behind them, that if they are not for everyone, I think the price makes it known lol, but it really is because for being so many years in the art world I consider that they have an added value, each stroke, each layer, each pixel, has its reason. Conceptually all my work is thought and
has a manifesto, which I created more than 20 years ago and is still valid. And that's basically it. PukuBlessings!"
Nahu Puku: "Final words, A big hug and very grateful for the opportunity. Finally I would love to show these links that, whoever likes to visit, are old Hive posts but they express very well my journey through the world of visual arts, and since my content in Hive is mainly about music, these are really quite heartfelt because they are made with passion and with the soul."
YearZero
A personal word from Nahu Paku:
Videos that I made about the Venezuela reality:
This video Its about my daily reality here in Caracas, Venezuela, with the high prices and the expensive cost of life in this
"socialism-narcodictatorial goverment country".
Another 2017 Video that I made about the crisis here:
Venezuelan socialism food like treasure - a real life nightmare
This story its about a personal experience lived in my own flesh, in my country Venezuela, in my hometown city: Caracas. It is not a text written with a pity words, but I will tell you that I am one more
victim of this system of dictatorial government that has led my country to ruin.
I am practically a ghost who lived in the shadow of people who threatened me for months, exerting pressure, informing me that my life was in danger due to my political tendency to oppose the dictatorial regime.
What was my mistake? To work for some state instances, that is to say governmental entities, that in my country are united, that is to say if you are not a supporter of the government, "you do not have the
right to work there" because you are an enemy of the government of the moment, in this case this dictatorship that has already been in power for 20 years.
And that's my story, I had to give up my jobs and I feared for my life a lot but a long time, I was forbidden in the labor issue and without being able to work in my university career area that I got with so
much effort and sacrifice, but they are the collateral effects of living in a place like this, a nightmare.
In the same way we continue here, fighting as warriors to survive this dark reality, with a positive mind and fighting day by day. sometimes in the shadows and other times in front, we cannot let ourselves be defeated by this evil. And you who live in other countries, take care, treasure and value your freedom, which is the best gift a human being can have.
Nahu Padilla.
La decadencia financiera by: Nahu Puku
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