Digital Repatriation

Rest of World
Editorial Illustration

Rest of World is a nonprofit publication that challenges expectations about whose experiences with technology matter. They commissioned us to create an Animated Editorial Illustration to accompany a feature story on Digital Repatriation.

The story followed The @lootynft digital heist of the Benin Bronzes, and explored the role of technology in the broader repatriation debate. We were also inspired by Nora al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles’s digital heist of the Nefertiti bust, housed at the Neues Museum, where they created a 3D copy of the bust, releasing it online under Creative Commons. We played around with the bust, creating digital sculpts of our own.




Project Information

Art Direction by Munira Mutaher
Animation by Deepti Megh


 

The collage features images of the Benin Bronzes, images of the Benin Bronze NFTs by the Looty Collective used with their permission, public domain images of the Nefertiti bust, the 3D model of the Nefertiti bust and our own renditions of it, images from the exhibition at Cairo where a 3D printed bust of Nefertiti was exhibited as a symbolic act of repatriation, some images of Rapa Nui collective’s artwork, floor plans of the Neues museum, and images of artworks by the Congo Plantation Workers Art Collective.