Robin Rhode explores his fascination with ownership, social status, and identity through the nature of virtual artmaking by examining particular objects and their cultural meaning; in this instance, a car with a cult-like street status in his home city of Johannesburg, the BMW E30.

More than just a motor vehicle, this object transcended township culture when first introduced into the South African market during the late 1980s and early 1990s during the ever-tightening apartheid era. The appropriation and modification of cars in the township was more than an expression of gangster flamboyance, becoming a destabilization of status symbols within white minority rule in South Africa.

Rhode explores the cultural affinity to objects that oscillate between an almost erotic romanticism and hyper-masculinity, depicted and created within a virtual world. The NFT seeks to traverse aspects of Afrofuturism by examining the intersection of creative technologies with African Diaspora culture. An everyday object rooted within a specific Black experience is played with and re-imagined within a virtual future.

The VR video content was first produced during the artist’s residency at the Google Arts and Culture Lab in Paris in 2018.