Established in 2019, Terrain.art is an online platform for the arts that focuses on non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The site provides access to NFT-registered artworks in digital and physical mediums, tapping into a growing global interest in digital art and NFT collection.

The platform was founded by Aparajita Jain, the co-director of Nature Morte. In addition to its curatorial team, the organisation also has an advisory council, which includes the scholars Deepanjana Klein, Madhuvanti Ghose and Sandhini Poddar, and artists Jitish Kallat and Pushpamala N. 

Both digital and physical artworks can be registered as NFTs on Terrain.art. In the case of physical artworks, such as paintings and prints, the NFT ID serves as a digital authentication mechanism. It is provided to the buyer through a hologram pasted to the back of the artwork and a corresponding transfer of the NFT to the buyer’s public cryptocurrency wallet, a transaction that is also recorded on the blockchain ledger. A buyer also receives a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist as well as the platform. A similar process, without the addition of a physical means of verification, is followed for digital artworks.  

The sale of art on the website is divided into two primary categories, curated and open. Terrain.art’s curatorial team works closely with the artists in the curated category to present short-duration online exhibitions of their work. Terrain.open is a section of Terrain.art on which artists can mint and sell NFTs of their artworks. Terrain.art also provides legal guidance to artists with regards to intellectual property rights and plagiarism. In the Indian context, as laws regarding cryptocurrency and digital currency are still being formulated, it also allows for the artworks listed on its site to be bought with fiat money. 

Apart from the curated artist exhibitions on the site, Terrain.art has held a few digital exhibitions and one offline physical exhibition. In June and July 2021, the site hosted an online exhibition Masters on Terrain: Lalu Prasad Shaw, featuring the works of the noted printmaker Lalu Prasad Shaw, which was organised in association with art curator Arjun Sawhney. Each of the twenty seven artworks in the exhibition had been registered as NFTs on blockchains and were open for digital ownership. In August, 2021, it also hosted Intertwined Intelligences, an exhibition of artworks based on and created using artificial intelligence (AI). The exhibition, curated by the artist Harshit Agrawal, featured seven artists from around the world who work in the sphere of AI art. In October of the same year, the platform presented Terrain Offline, held at Bikaner House, New Delhi, which featured physical artworks by artists including Nur Mahammad, Ramakanta Samantaray, Susanta Kumar Panda and Teja Gavankar, alongside works from Indian artists working in the digital medium, such as Amrit Pal Singh, Khyati Trehan and Laya Mathikshara. 

The platform made its first appearance at the India Art Fair in April 2022, where it presented the works of seven NFT artists, including Mathikshara and Singh.