Cue ARTSPLIT, a Nigeria-founded platform wants to implement the same principles, but for African art and African art collectors so that users can own a fraction of an artwork by an African artist for just a few dollars.
“What if art could be an investment or financial instrument?” says Onyinye Anyaegbu, ARTSPLIT’s executive director of operations and product, mentioning one of the driving questions behind ARTSPLIT’s creation. Each investment-grade artwork listed is divided into 100,000 splits and users can bid to own a piece of African artwork, which can then be traded on a secondary market.
While Artsplit is still in its early days, there are promising signs: $5 million in funds raised, about $1 million in transactions on the app since launching in April this year, 8,000 users in 54 countries, 78 auctions, and 55 works of art listed from Africa’s top-selling artists.
In its first physical auction months back, ARTSPLIT marked the historic sale of the 1977 artwork “Agbogho Mmuo” from the Ogolo series by one of Africa’s most influential artists, Ben Enwonwu. While African artwork has historically been underpriced on the global market, the auction was oversubscribed, boosting the artwork’s value from a reserve price of $0.5 to $1.05 per split at the end of the bidding.
In this new initiative, there is an interesting premise—making investing in art less elitist by lowering barriers to entry, understanding how individuals (especially Africans) value our art and also meeting people where they are—apps on mobile phones or laptops where business can be conducted in a few clicks.
