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After The 'Profile Picture'

  • info56598806
  • Sep 21
  • 6 min read

There’s been a refreshing trend away from the ‘PFP’ that I’ve been loving recently: it feels as if artists are finding ways of expressing themselves through large collections while not having the art and composition centred around some sort of figure.


PFPs (profile pictures) have historically dominated the NFT space, and continue to do so. Whether this is tied historically to projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club being, for a time, the face of NFTs, or that the way crypto is tied to online identity and anonymity makes it a perfect medium for exploration of identity through the PFP NFT format, or some other reason, it’s hard to say.


What is easy to see is that these collections frequently top the NFT markets and general CT (crypto twitter) mindshare.


Bored Ape Yacht Club, the 'face' of NFTs
Bored Ape Yacht Club, the 'face' of NFTs

Le Scimmie
Le Scimmie

Obviously, a network like Ethereum is known for other types of art, especially pieces that are made via code to create generative works that run off of the network and yield impressive results. Even so, the top collection on Opensea at the time of writing this is something called ‘Le Scimmie’, which, if you’ll believe it!, is a rugcore Monkey PFP.

In 2025, collections like this are unacceptably boring and plainly crass.





Solana made creating and deploying collections infinitely easier than it was on Ethereum and many other networks, so it is unsurprising that many PFP collections were launched there. This includes an incredible amount of Milady derivatives (collections that take core inspiration from the Milady collection on Ethereum but are remixed and change to create a new form of identity).


Milady is a key touchstone for the idea of a PFP being inherently tied to your identity, that choosing a PFP is a way of showing off your core values and in part, your personality. It’s access to a community, to acceptance into a herd.


There’s obviously a very important artistry to PFP’s, and I see them as a totally valid form of art – I just feel inundated with how many of these collections release seemingly daily, and I’m desperate for a fresh approach to NFT creation on Solana and other networks.


Milady Maker, Milady Auras 3, Midlady, Mifella


Thankfully, there’s been plenty of projects that aren’t PFPs to choose from recently.


Parker Ito recently released his 4th collection in a year, ‘The Pilgrim’s Living Room Crucifixion; Mona Lisa Hyper-Gamble’: a collection of 222 still lifes based on an unfinished (and later found to be fake) Dürer piece and a sofa from his old apartment. It’s deeper than that, referencing an immense amount of religious imagery and iconography, as well as being expanded upon to reference multiple collections from the Avant Gay scene. You see Jim Spindles ‘Scarecrows’ make up a crucified head of a horseman, Parker’s own ‘Drilady’ collection features prominently, with Lola Bunny being turned from cute to monstrous with a tentacle like tongue and giant fangs, or another one where she’s been painted as the Vitruvian Man. My POSTCARDs2 collection is used as an overlay in a magnifying glass like frame, which bear inscriptions such as ‘NFT WAR’, or ‘PFP’.


Parker has created an NFT within an NFT here, stating ‘This isn’t a PFP collection. But there’s a PFP collection embedded inside it. The collection has horses, it has knights, it has Drilady,—like Russian dolls stacked within each other. It’s a nested system.’


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There is something about the NFT that lends itself to this artwork-within-an-artwork framing; possibly it’s the digital nature of it, as this allows for it to be zoomed in on easily, cropped, edited, and repurposed; or it’s the artists own ability to create a world for the works to live in that may not be possible in a physical setting.


This is exemplified in Evil Biscuits latest collection ‘Drifella III’ – a set of triptych’s that are displayed on a gallery wall, framed and surrounded by the imagined Drifella character’s childhood toys.


You are not only offered a PFP in the form of one 1 of these 3 canvases, but you are given an imagined space that your art is immediately viewable in. This plays interestingly on the way that as crypto artists, we usually have to become gallerists for our own career. There are many perks to full creative control (and thus 100% of monetary proceeds from sales) that come with not being involved in a gallery, but it does also mean that all promotion, press, technicalities, and admin are in your hands.


Drifella III achieves something that feels much more seamless than other attempts at creating a space for digital viewing, such as setting up ‘virtual galleries’ you can walk around or interactive game environments where the works are pasted onto white walls. There’s a lot of personality to be found in the individuality of the works but also the places they are shown in, such as this one with a wallpaper you’d find at your eccentric aunt’s house somewhere Upstate, with crayon scribbles and miniature toys from your younger cousin filling the floor.


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I was definitely inspired by artists use of digital ‘rooms’ for my PRAY4LOWBIE project, which was a set of 333 pixel-art funeral parlours. Specifically, my #1 inspiration was from the Tojiba collection ‘Toji A’.


These computer ‘Altars’ call back to a time where the PC was a sacred place, where the internet was ‘a place you go to’, not a place that is constantly accessible.

To me, they’re also an imagined idea of an NFT artists studio: we’ve lost the tubes of oil paint and smell of turps and replaced it with our favourite cursed images, knickknacks that feel like they’ve been transported out of the digital realm, with the main focus being the brightly coloured PC system and the endless possibilities of that screen.

Toji A



There’s many more ways to push it. The mint that prompted me to write this article was a new collection by Duguccipourmonchat titled ‘Reverie’, which minted this week on VVV.

Reverie #275
Reverie #275

It’s randomised, non-linear, manga-inspired, comic panels, all rendered in an intensely pastel coloured MSPaint aesthetic.


Dugucci explains to me that it was inspired by the discovery of artist Yuichi Yokoyama, working in the realm ‘neo-manga’, with his works characterised by ‘fast-moving lines and onomatopoeia, the flow of time drawn without interruption, and unique characters’.


He goes onto say that ‘I realised manga could be abstract and break traditional narrative codes. That idea of creating an “anti-story” or a silent, absurd narrative really stuck with me.’



Yuichi Yokoyama
Yuichi Yokoyama


Despite the randomisation, there still appears to be a relatively cohesive narrative running through each piece, even if it is a strange one. It sort of feels like when you try to explain a complex dream to someone; how it plays back in your memory as this disjointed technicolour fiasco.


Many of the pieces are re-edited in procreate to add small details and unique features, adding to the individuality and sense of deja vu when seeing repeated traits.


It feels immensely fresh and original, in it’s use of a comic book panel as format, it’s bold aesthetics and its attempt at creating a silent narrative through a large set of works.



There’s also a few great examples of this that are still minting, such as ICSA by Enzo Rio Fonseca, a fever dream digital collage collection that takes a lot from the trait-maxxed aesthetic of previous Avant Gay collections, and VOREBUG420911666 by adulttrafficker, a hideous horror show of grotesque cartoons.


Toji-A, the previously mentioned Tojiba collection is also still minting.


These recent projects have me immensely excited at the future of NFTs and the possibilities for new forms of artistry and world-building outside of centralised characters and PFPs.


I know when I started making art here I felt like I had to create something that fit into the current ‘meta’/’mould’, something that was proven to have worked in the market. Luckily, I now believe we’re at a point where those who are creating work that feels new, novel, and innovative are those who are to be most rewarded.



Links:

‘The Bored Ape NFT craze is all about ego and money, not art’: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jan/04/bored-ape-nft-art-eminem


Originally published here on September 21st, 2025.

 
 
 

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