Madonna Births a Tree in an NFT Collaboration For Charity

In just about a month and a half, Madonna has gone from initially entering the blockchain by purchasing her first ever NFT (non-fungible token), to becoming one herself. The singer is truly embracing the future, partnering with famed digital artist Mike Winkelmann AKA Beeple, to create three digitally rendered videos featuring the singer, which will be auctioned off on Wednesday, with all proceeds going to charity.

Beeple and Madonna have been working on the project—called Mother of Creation—for a year, and they now have three one-minute videos to show for it. Each work represents “a different form of birth in our contemporary world,” according to the website. There’s the “Mother of Nature,” a video showing Madonna’s avatar on a surgical table, legs spread as a tree grows out of her. While leaves and flowers bloom, Madonna reads a new poem, written for the project. “My journey through life as a woman is like that of a tree,” she says. “Starting from a small seed, always pushing against the resistance of the earth.”

Next, is the “Mother of Evolution,” which shows butterflies coming out of the singer, representing a “sign of hope.” This time, the avatar is placed in a post-apocalyptic scene as Madonna reads lyrics from her song, “Justify My Love” in the background. The series is rounded out by “Mother of Technology,” which illustrates centipede robots crawling out of Madonna as she lays in a forest, “depicting the way science can also give birth light into the world, but only if used with the right consciousness.”

“It’s been an amazing journey building this together from an intellectual idea to an emotional story, giving birth to art,” Madonna said in a statement. “I wanted to investigate the concept of creation, not only the way a child enters the world through a woman’s vagina, but also the way an artist gives birth to creativity.”

The triptych will be put up for auction on May 11th through the online, NFT marketplace SuperRare. All the proceeds from the sale will go toward three charities, the Voices of Children Foundation, helping women and children affected by the war in the Ukraine; the City of Joy Foundation, supporting victims of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Black Mama’s Bail Out, providing bail for incarcerated caregivers. In addition, Moonpay, a crypto platform that helped with the project, will be donating $100,000 to each charity.

Back in March, Madonna announced her entrance into the Metaverse on Twitter when she purchased her first NFT, a Bored Ape, probably the most recognizable of the tokens. According to the NFT platform OpenSea, the singer purchased the piece for 180 ether, about $560,000 at the time.

As for Beeple, he knows his way around the NFT game by now. The artist initially gained popularity for his project, “Everydays.” For 15 years, Beeple has been creating a new image everyday and sharing it online. Some of the works were even featured on pieces in Nicolas Ghesquière’s spring/summer 2019 ready-to-wear collection for Louis Vuitton. Then, in March 2021, a collage of the first 5000 “Everydays” sold in a Christie’s auction for $69.3 million. It was the first purely digital NFT to be sold by the auction house, and the sale price was the third-highest achieved for a living artist, behind only Jeff Koons and David Hockney. Now, with Madonna’s full participation, and Beeple as her guide, NFTs’ continuing push into pop culture just got even more powerful.