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 comics only. But TCAF is at the center of a firestorm of controversy after it announced that NFT artist Pink Cat, aka Saba Moeel, will be one of the festival’s main guests. On Tuesday, TCAF announced they were not inviting Moeel and explained the original intentions behind their invitation.
Pink Cat’s guest status immediately caused a stir in the artist community. A comic book festival highlighting an artist primarily concerned with NFTs is an unusual start. Many members of the art community viewed NFTs as an attack on their profession when they first emerged as a trend. Over time and expensive monkeys were captured
The Moeel controversy intensified as social media users went through her online history to find her a history of the pursuit of works of art, Tweets disparaging community artists
Yes, these guys invited me to unload. They paid for flight hotel etc. I didn’t even know who they were. Very strange
It’s not my world, I’m a real artist, I don’t care about organizations or fairs, I have my own following, it’s not cult, it’s mainstream. The LA Times called me Gen Z Garfield, we’re not in the same league.
Opposition to Moeel’s TCAF invitation continued until Memorial Day. On Monday, the festival’s official account tweeted: “TCAF leadership and organizers have heard your legitimate concerns and we are working on an explanation. Thank you for your patience while we prepare a response.” That statement was released on Tuesday. It reads in part:
TCAF initially gave Moeel a programming invitation based on her daily work on digital comics on Instagram and the personal meaning that work had for one of our team members. At the time of this invitation, the organization was not aware of Moeel’s online behavior, plagiarism or allegations of tracing. We apologize for programming and promoting this artist.
We made a mistake. As a promise to our community, we will use this as a learning moment as we move forward as an organization, and revisit the checks and balances we currently use to process our program decisions.
The statement further clarifies that no one on the board has any financial ties to Moeel, such as purchasing any of their NFTs. The statement concludes: “We are extremely proud of the selection of artists and exhibitors we have assembled for this year’s festival and we sincerely hope that this mistake on our part does not overshadow the hard work of our team, guests and our exhibitors.”
