İlgi Evecan has been immersed in innovation and new technologies for most of her career, so working for a Swedish art-tech startup, couldn’t be a better fit. Stockholm-based Ílgi is Chief Metaverse Officer of global online art marketplace Picture This, where she heads the Metaverse and NFTs unit, crafting ‘the art brand of the future within web3.’
As a business development executive and supporter of global female leadership, Ílgi ‘helps create new businesses, grow brands, and develop strategic partnership programs across many industries.’
Her current job entails ‘steering the company’s direction to become the ultimate space for the future of photography art.’ Besides establishing the Metaverse and NFTs unit, and securing prominent investors, she’s also creating a ‘strong bridge’ between art and crypto worlds through partnering with top web3 and Metaverse players.
The website of Picture This says its grand mission − as both a marketplace and media space − is to ‘make amazing photography available to everyone on the planet.’ It does this by inspiring, exploring, showing, and selling works of the world’s best photographers and telling the stories behind their images.
Ílgi explains the company’s platform features ‘world-renowned photographers, their photographic art and impactful stories through curated drops.’
Ílgi asserts, “My vision is to broaden the horizon of photography art and f ind meaningful collaborations within the intersection of different art forms, blockchain and beyond.”
An important focus is launching ‘collaborations between our photographers and artists of different art forms, tech scientists, gaming, and art and culture-focused metaverses to transition their artwork and stories into different digital realms.’
She sees their business field as a visual creativity and culture business. “When you look at the scene from that frame, you have a broader understanding of the trends and tendencies that will affect the future of the photography art and collecting experience.”
With its goal to reduce barriers for entry to NFTs for both artists and our collectors, Ílgi remarks they’re also ‘enabling iconic photographers to tap into the crypto realm to broaden their audience and find longterm support for their creative activities.
This ambitious strategist (who’s also a devoted mom to her baby daughter), entered the space by cleverly linking her innovative mindset to her appetite for art. In late 2020, seeing an opportunity, Ílgi contacted Sotheby’s Institute to host their Art & Innovation sessions, which quickly grew into events around NFTs, the Metaverse and beyond .
“Then, combining my business development background with my new passion area, I jumped headfirst into the web3 space to advise and support brands and individuals trying to strategize their way in.”
Passionate about working with accelerators and entrepreneurs to create impactful businesses, Ílgi enthuses the ‘idea of us all contributing to this big shift of our time from our own fields, is something that makes me excited about my job every day.’
She sees the Metaverse as ‘virtual shared experiences happening in virtual spaces, and in the physical world.’ Yet, despite more widespread awareness of web3 and the Metaverse in the past year, there’s still a long way to go to provide seamless user experiences.
However, she’s hopeful better experiences will unlock more accessibility, eventually attracting and keeping new users, adding we’ve already ‘seen adoption by big tech companies and many brands with metaverse aspirations are dipping their toes in.’
“We’ve experienced increased digital consumption, hyped cycles and narratives around the Metaverse and NFTs last year. Now, the crypto market in general, is experiencing a correction and it’s only natural after the long hype cycles.”
But Ílgi remarks, ‘even amid volatility, many enterprises have continued to build their business within web3. From real estate to automotive to banks, enterprise level interests have grown tremendously this year and so has consumer adoption and engagement.’
Ílgi says with ‘the web3 genie out of the bottle,’ she’s optimistic it will present exciting opportunities for photography art. Creators − including digital artists and musicians − are taking more control and pride in their digital identities everywhere and starting to make their big NFT moves.
Creators are concentrating more on their vision and story, while collectors are searching more for NFT art projects with artistic value, and quality-focused projects rather than ones hyped by speculation and celebrity fame.
Ílgi cautions while web3 promises brands new ways to attract their customers, ‘brand owners clearly need to adapt new modes of thinking and create passionate user communities to succeed in this new era.’ She explains “instead of launching an NFT without a strong ‘why’ and value proposition behind it, brands need to pay attention to their brand heritage, key strengths and design their strategies accordingly in the web3 space.”
Even though we’re still in the very early days of web3, Ílgi predicts it’ll be ‘the next hotbed for innovation for years to come.’ She’s confident in the future, ‘blockchain based web3 will creep into nearly every part of our lives − including our work and social lives, the way we consume services, and culture as well as how we experience interactions.
Confessing she ‘doesn’t for one second pretend to know exactly how the Metaverse will play out, she’s ‘sure it’ll have a big impact on our lives by enhancing and enabling a fulfilling productive layer in the real life (IRL) world.’
As for her own future, Ílgi’s enthusiasm shows in her charming smile and bubbly attitude when she remarks, ‘the fact that I’m involved in shaping this space in my own little way, as well as engaging with the pioneers of web3 and Metaverse really excites me!’
ÍLGI EVECAN’S METAVERSE & WEB3 TIPS AND RESOURCES
Website: picturethis.art
