NFT artist Pink Cat, also known as Saba Moeel, was uninvited to Toronto Comic Arts Festival after several scandals about her art and online conduct. TCAF clarified why they initially invited Pink Cat and why they are retracting their invitation.
Why Did TCAF Uninvite NFT Artist Pink Cat?
The TCAF is one of the most prestigious events that celebrates comics — and only comics. However, TCAF is under fire after they announced Pink Cat as one of the festival’s featured guests.
First, Pink Cat is an NFT artist, and a comics festival highlighting an artist whose main focus is NFTs is unusual. The situation quickly escalated when social media users discovered her online history. They found that she has traced some artworks in the past.
In addition to her controversial art, there are also tweets disparaging community artists, appropriating Black culture for profit, and transphobic remarks.
Pink Cat’s Comment After She Got Disinvited
Polygon contacted Moeel about the issue, and she replied to them with the following message:
“Yeah these guys invited me to disinvite me. They payed flight hotel etc, i didn’t even know who they were. Very weird. This isn’t my world, I’m a real life artist I don’t care about organizations or trade shows, I have my own following it’s not a cult following it’s mainstream. The LA times called me the Gen Z Garfield, we aren’t in the same league.”
TCAF’s Statement About The Issue
On Tuesday, The TCAF executive and organizers released a statement to address the concerns of those who called out the event for inviting Moeel.
According to TCAF, they initially extended an invitation to Moeel based on their daily digital comics work on Instagram. However, they admit that at the time of this invitation, they were unaware of Moeel’s online conduct, tracing allegations, and plagiarism.
“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 will re-examine the checks and balances we currently use to process our programming decisions,” the statement said.
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