Meta Betties Go Into “Interstellar Overdrive”

Photo of Kandis McCall (@withlove.7) as Meta Betty courtesy of @joshsauceda and @bleupablo

By KENDALL KRANTZ August 27, 2024

“We have a lot of haters, and we have a lot of lovers.” - Meta Betties

“Interstellar Overdrive: The Art of Space Exploration” was the latest exhibition of Meta Betties, Artist in Residence in The Canvas 3.0 Gallery within NYC’s famed Oculus, followed by one of the group’s exclusive, signature performance art afterparties. 

Work displayed ranged from collage to illustration to reprocessed AI generations*. “Interstellar Overdrive” was curated completely agnostic to media and artist CV, chosen by the curators for aesthetic alone. Screens rotated through the work of fifty artists, one of whom will be selected for an upcoming solo show by a jury of creatives. 

Mary Peng (@DimensionxChi) Dreamscape

The diversity of practice was electric. One, Vj Deliria, a leading figure in the crypto art space, with a trippy Times Square exhibition and a mile-long speaking resume in art education, produced a glitchy, space exploration loop in a classic NFT style. Another, Laura Iseley, a traditional artist and mermaid performer about to head to Scotland for a collage residency, displayed a maximalist collage of a science fiction dreamscape. My favorite piece of the gallery show was a collage, “Dreams: Gymnopédie,” by Mary L. Peng. In this dreamscape, a solitary figure strolls along the starting edge of a brushstroke of light across a vast expanse of space, a moment of contemplation before the night to come. 

Meta Betties’ creative engine, Blakelee Pieroni, is a well-established neo expressionist. At Art Basel Miami, in collaboration with theART-Dept., Pieroni performed “Labor of Materiality,” wherein audiences were encouraged to scan a blood-soaked egg with their mobile phones. A digital chip inside linked to a petition for the Women’s Protection Act of 2023. Pieroni’s current act, Meta Betties, is “long-form performance art. You can’t see the concept in under an hour.”

An individual Meta Betty is one distinct iteration of a pinup character – think a space-age Betty Boop, replete with red lipstick and dark hair. However, Pieroni subverts the traditional form of the illustrative genre. In “Interstellar Overdrive,” the Meta Betties appeared onscreen intermittently. The “Betties” always appeared with something called a trait, which can be either a visual symbol, a sign, or a speech bubble, and a QR code linking to a petition or resource. Pieroni explains, “Historically, pinup girls haven’t talked. I’m playing with the voice bubble and protest signs as an agency.”

Photo of Celia Torrey (@celiatorrey) and Karley Wasaff (@kineticswithkarley) as Nuns Playing Strip Poker for Peace courtesy of @joshsauceda and @bleupablo

The Meta Betties are pixel duplications, but as the night goes on, the digital becomes physical; myriad femme performers emerge as Metta Betties, including Pieroni herself, in matching hair and makeup. Metta Betty iterates, but only on her own terms. As they traverse the space, they are disorienting, interchangeable yet distinct copies of a character foregrounding her belief-driven missions. Pieroni explains, “The figure and the body is very important to me. I’m challenging you to get over the bias of what you’re seeing.”

“We’re commenting on the sexualization and commodification of women and our identities while talking about digital activism,” shares Pieroni. Each show is combined with increasingly grandiose live events, performance art, and calls to action. Expect something on the scale of a seven-foot tall golden birdcage or nuns playing strip poker for peace. Pieroni treats Meta Betty as “as a social experiment of self on blockchain.”

The Meta Betties project has set up an extremely sophisticated infrastructure for digital activism alongside the art. Beyond the aforementioned QR codes, Meta Betties uses VoterVoice to instantly donate a portion of each sale. They sell a clothing line manufactured with U.N. sustainability standards featuring scannable patches linking to petitions, allowing fans to wear their heart on their sleeve.

Pieroni’s choice to dive into NFT/Web3/Blockchain/Crypto art with the Meta Betties project is extremely complex. She recognizes that staggering financial investments underway in this digital space are ripe to be co-opted for both satirization and activism. The audience for a blockchain character series is ripe for conversion into collectors, philanthropists, and activist communities. The Oculus has amazing dwell time and foot traffic, leading to an extremely rich diversity of foot traffic for every show. Pieroni’s ability to secure and leverage this space (physically as well as the broader Web3 community) is a testament to her understanding of how performance, audience, and ideology intersect. 

Meta Betties offers a bridge between the digital and the deeply human, inviting us to explore how art in the virtual space can foster community, support social justice, and amplify information within powerful communities. They create wonderful touchpoints for creatives to experiment, perform, and sell work. Though sometimes confrontational, the Meta Betties’ energy is always directed towards impact. 

New forms and platforms will forever emerge to challenge our perceptions and expand our horizons. While the digital realm may seem foreign or even off-putting to some, Meta Betties is harnessing the power of Web3 technology not just to create art, but to drive meaningful change. This is not just about pixels on a screen—this is about recognizing where money and attention centralizes and leveraging that power to make a tangible difference in the real world. WM

* While not within the scope of this article, I do want to highlight that the ethicality of machine-generated art is an ongoing conversation in legal and creative spaces.