Emily Ratajkowski to Auction 'Buying Myself Back' NFT

Emily Ratajkowski is taking back her agency over an artwork by Richard Prince that features an Instagram post of the model printed on a large canvas. Ratajkowski called out Prince's appropriative use of her likeness in a 2020 essay for The Cut, which highlights her mission to reclaim her image from paparazzi, the artist, and more. The model had acquired one of two pieces in Prince's New Portraits series that feature her image, which now hangs in her Los Angeles home. The "painting" pictures Ratajkowski in her first Sports Illustrated swimsuit photoshoot, with a comment from Prince's account underneath.

Prince's artworks in the series sold for $80,000 each, a sum, as Ratajkowski points out in her essay, which is high above what she made for the original photoshoot. By turning it into a nonfungible token, or NFT, the model will receive a portion of the profits each time the image is reproduced. The NFT being auctioned by Christie's, titled "Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution," is a composite image of Ratajkowski standing in her New York apartment, posing in front of the Prince artwork that is in her LA home. 

Explaining her decision to create the NFT in an Instagram post, the model said: "The digital terrain should be a place where women can share their likeness as they choose, controlling the usage of their image and receiving whatever potential capital attached. Instead, the internet has more frequently served as a space where others exploit and distribute images of women’s bodies without their consent and for another’s profit. Art has historically functioned similarly: works of unnamed muses sell for millions of dollars and build careers of traditionally male artists, while the subjects of these works receive nothing. I have become all too familiar with this narrative, as chronicled in my 2020 essay for New York Magazine, Buying Myself Back."

She continues, "NFTs carry the potential to allow women ongoing control over their image and the ability to receive rightful compensation for its usage and distribution." Ratajkowski also said in an interview with the New York Times that cryptocurrency experts warned her that her image would be used in NFTs anyways, so she might as well make one herself.

For models and public figures, their likeness is tied to capital and value, but they have little control over who profits from it or who appropriates it once it's been published. Ratajkowski isn't the only model to take control over her image via NFTs. Earlier this month, supermodel Kate Moss created a series of NFT videos that were auctioned on the digital platform Foundation. Pop singer The Weeknd also released an NFT that fetched more than $2 million.

Ratajkowski's "Buying Myself Back" is being auctioned by Christie's on May 14, 2021 via the Opensea NFT platform.