Graffit Artwork at Dufferin Mall by I do not know
I passed this graffiti again this evening … I saw this originally back at the end of April.. It looks like an Indigenous Man praying with a rabbit that looks like the one from that Donnie Darko movie.. there’s an American flag between them with the words Bonnes Pacques..
So why I am I posting this ? Mainly so I can talk about this Instagram Art Scam that seems to be growing in scale.
Art Scam Video
On the weekend I cleaned up my Instagram account.. and I noticed I was following one of these 1340 art accounts. For the past three months.. when I post anything with an art hashtag.. I get a comment like this “Are you the artist? Are you interested in a feature on our 1340art instagram page? For more info. Please click the link in our bio.” or this “love this image! Would you be interested in a feature on our 1340art page? For more info. Please click the link in our bio”.. I just usually delete the comments and move on.. but on Saturday I googled 1340 Art Scam.. and discovered a whole bunch of artists talking about how they had been approached by these so called ‘curators’.
A younger woman even posted a YouTube video explaining what happened to her. She had been contacted by this supposed Art magazine to submit her work. She was all excited.. and she showed her art (something similar to this). She worked on it for a few days.. then she got an email explaining that she would need to pay a fee to have her work featured.
Luckily, she was smart enough to realize it was a scam.. but I felt really bad for her. She was an aspiring artist just hoping to get artwork showcased.
Art Scam Video
I found more about this particular scam by looking on Reddit and even TrustPilot where they had submitted their own fake reviews.. I was startled by how elaborate this scheme is.
You should never have to pay to have your work featured. I’ve seen another one for photography. They were asking photographers to pay to submit their photos for a contest. There’s always been scams that target artists unfortunately….
Not to be a bummer but its like they say “If you see something Say something”. I don’t think people realize that Facebook and Instagram are not liable for the content on their platforms.
