During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, OpenSea spotlighted a handful of artists, photographers, and creators who have used NFTs to showcase their artistic points of view. 

This month’s curation is overflowing with color, food, and mesmerizing uses of AI video. We’ve spotlighted artists like performance artist Foodmasku, digital artist Grant Yun, and childhood friends Shavonne Wong and Lenne Chai. 

Below are these and six other featured NFT creators and the collections they’ve brought into the world. Through these nine collections, we explore many perspectives and imagined worlds, but most importantly, we learn about the artists who bring their visions to life daily.

MUMBOT WORLD by Mumbot  

Jade Kuei, known in the art world as Mumbot, is a multimedia artist. Over the past 15 years, she’s created “Mumbot World” — a magical character-driven world full of ghosts, mushrooms, and young witches — that spans both physical and digital spaces. Her genesis NFT collection, MUMBOT WORLD, now includes 20 pieces of unique artwork, some are 1-of-1 and others are editions. 

Operating in web3 since 2021, Mumbot has continued building MUMBOT WORLD in web2, web3, and brick-and-mortar spaces. She recently added the “Ghosting Through Life” NFT to the MUMBOT WORLD collection. She first exhibited the piece as part of her solo gallery show. It shows Aughostus the Ghost, standing against a pink background as he ponders the meaning of life as a ghost. Mumbot, the artist, has high hopes for her family of characters with a potential animated series and game in the works. But while she continues to reach for the stars, a plushie of Aughostus the Ghost already beat her to space flying on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket mission in January 2024.

By Proxy by Shavonne Wong and Lenne Chai

Shavonne Wong and Lenne Chai have been friends since their adolescent years growing up in Singapore. As adults, they both pursued creative careers. Wong is a fashion photographer, digital artist, and 3D virtual model creator. Chai is a photographer and director whose work has been featured across Vogue, W Magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar. Their joint NFT collection —  By Proxy— is a creative collaboration and exercise in reimagining their childhood memories. 

The collection’s 60 NFTs lean into both artists’ skill sets. Chai photographed some Singaporean locations that were memorable to them and served as the setting for each piece. At the same time, Wong developed a 3D model of a girl based on both of their teen selves that was digitally added onto the images. The photo project tells the story of this girl’s journey through girlhood — from going home after school to falling in love for the first time. The girl is the focal point in each image, complemented fully by bright, airy, and dream-like backgrounds.

In an Instagram caption announcing the project, Chai wrote, “When @shavonne.wong first approached me to do a collaboration together, I was wildly intrigued by the possibilities of using her 3D virtual model as a way of unpacking our childhood, but nothing could’ve prepared me for how much I would love the end result…A lot of media that we see, even in Singapore, is extremely western-centric – as 2 Singaporean creators working together in a relatively new space, it felt important to showcase work from an authentically Asian perspective.” 

Interwoven by Emily Xie

As generative artist Emily Xie writes on her X bio, she enjoys using her digital art to reinterpret collage, textiles and tradition. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that her contribution to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s ‘Remembrance of Things Future’ exhibition is an algorithmic reimagination of a quilt in LACMA’s existing collection. Xie coded Interwoven to include “creature-like forms” and nods to the bullseye patterns found in Martha Lou Jones' original 1986 Bullseye Quilt. Xie’s mix of patterns and textures brings a quilt-making tradition into the web3 world.

While each NFT can stand as its own shape-driven quilt, when viewed together, the 100-item collection seems like a patchwork quilt passed down through generations.

The Four Seasons of Jiuzhaigou by Mike Yamashita

Mike Yamashita is a photographer, author, and producer. During his 45-year tenure at National Geographic, he photographed wide-ranging topics across six continents. Jiuzhaigou, a Chinese national park, is the focal point of one of his NFT collections. 

Yamashita shares that The Four Seasons of Jiuzhaigou includes images he photographed over multiple trips starting in 2007. The collection is particularly noteworthy because it is “the largest collection of photographs by a single photographer outside of China” and is a time capsule of Jiuzhaigou’s beauty before a magnitude 7 earthquake caused significant damage to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

While clicking through the collection, one is transported to the middle of Jiuzhaigou’s waterfalls, lush greenery in the thick of spring, and its translucent lakes against winter wonderland snowscapes.

Delectables by Foodmasku 

At the beginning of the pandemic, performance artist and photographer Antonius Oki Wiriadjaja had an idea — what if he used food to create a mask, and then what would happen if he photographed himself wearing them? This is how Wiriadjaja became Foodmasku, the performance artist.

After some time sharing his work on social media, Foodmasku minted Delectables, one of the first generative photography NFT collections where the NFTs are filled with his colorful and delectable food masks. 

The NFT collection includes tasty visual masterpieces like Foodmasku with a waffle halo or a hot dog mouth. 

Fourteenth Century Series by Reuben Wu

Digital artist and photographer Reuben Wu shared his “Fourteenth Century Series” in 2022 on X (formerly Twitter), where he posted the project’s short film.

Fourteenth Century Series is an NFT collection of still frames pulled from the short film. In addition to the NFT, fans of Wu’s work could also purchase lenticular prints of his work. Wu states the multi-format project “is about time, and the idea that our present is simply the point where the future becomes the past. From imagination to memory, and we are somewhere in between.” 

In addition to his work in the NFT space, Wu is also a photographer for National Geographic Magazine, and museums like The Metropolitan Museum of Art have exhibited his work.

Cozy Homes by Grant Yun

Grant Yun, a prominent artist in the NFT space, uses Adobe Illustrator to create his line-driven vector designs. Yun is well-known for his “Cow” NFT, a part of his “Midwest” collection.

One of his earlier NFT collections is Cozy Homes, released in 2021. The collection includes split artwork of “Daytime Homes” NFTs and “Nighttime Homes” NFTs. The daytime art pieces are full of sunshine-filled greenery and perfectly designed homes, while the nighttime home's only light source comes from the house and car. Yun stated that Cozy Homes was the first editions he ever did. 

Moments: Around The World by Billy Dinh 

Brooklyn-based photographer Billy Dinh has photographed his way through over 50 countries. In Moments: Around The World, he shares images from 15 countries, including Taiwan, Jordan, Egypt, the United States, Morocco, and Hong Kong. 

The NFT collection puts people viewing the photographs on the platform of a New York City subway train or walking by a child with her head stuck outside the window pointing. The collection is full of candid lifestyle shots, which offer a taste of Dinh’s artistic style, which relies on light and shadow to create film-like quality.

In the collection’s description, Dinh says that the series represents the many places, hours, and experiences that he’s fortunate enough to share. The collection also represents his growth and personal journey as a photographer. 

Anthrocinematica by Chikai

Artist and innovator Chikai is the co-creator of Google Earth, holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, and is the artist behind the Anthrocinematica NFT collection. Anthrocinematica is an AI-driven video NFT collection where each NFT is a perfect loop sequence that zooms into the pinned photograph on the wall of the subject. 

The collection’s photo wall layout is an engaging way to explore thirteen rooms across five different countries and the different stories each AI-created photograph tells. 

As Chikai explains on his website: 

“This all forms an imperfect yet idealistic microcosm of human life both on a global scale, but also a personal one as the duality of each room reflects my Japanese heritage, as a son of immigrant parents, and having been born and raised in the US.”