Who Owns the Digital Past? Chidi Nwaubani on looty.art and Digital Restitution
- Daria Kravchuk
- 12 minutes ago
- 9 min read
The museum vitrine is never simply a transparent surface. It determines what can be seen, who can approach it, and who has the authority to explain what lies behind the glass. For objects displaced through colonial extraction, this question of access is inseparable from a larger question of ownership: not only who possesses the physical object, but who controls its image, its history, its interpretation, and its circulation.
These questions sit at the centre of looty.art, the artistic platform founded by British-Nigerian artist and designer Chidi Nwaubani. Beginning with a deliberately provocative question (can you steal back what has already been stolen?), looty.art approaches digital technology not as a substitute for physical restitution, but as a means of challenging the structures that continue to determine access to displaced cultural heritage.
Through 3D scanning, augmented reality, digital archives and decentralized technologies, Nwaubani works with objects whose physical presence often remains within Western museum collections. Yet reproducing these objects digitally is only the beginning. In his practice, the digital twin is not conceived as a neutral replica. Once removed from the logic of the museum catalogue, digital data can be reinterpreted, circulated and activated, becoming material for new artistic narratives and new forms of cultural agency.
This distinction is particularly important at a moment when digitization is increasingly presented by cultural institutions as a form of accessibility. A high-resolution scan may make an object visible across borders, but visibility alone does not resolve the histories and power structures surrounding it. Who creates and owns the digital record? Where does that data live, and who is able to use it? And, crucially, can digital preservation expand the possibilities of restitution without becoming an argument against the return of the physical object itself?
For .ART, these questions resonate with a broader consideration of what it means for culture to exist online. A digital presence can function as documentation, but it can also establish context, provenance and a point of entry into a much larger cultural ecosystem. Looty reflects this duality: a project deeply engaged with technology while insisting that technology remains a medium rather than the final destination.
In the conversation that follows, Nwaubani discusses the origins of looty.art, his skepticism toward performative approaches to decolonization, the possibilities and limitations of digital restitution, and his ambition to develop a borderless "Meta-Museum." At its heart is a question that extends far beyond technology: if cultural heritage is to become genuinely accessible in the digital age, who should have the power to determine how it is remembered, interpreted and carried forward?
Could you tell us about the origins of Looty? What question were you trying to answer when you founded the platform?
As an African growing up in Europe, there is always the paradox that surrounds your life and many questions about our history. I started looty.art with a simple, paradoxical question: can you steal back what has already been stolen? When I visited Western institutions, I saw our heritage behind glass, trapped and waiting to be released. The more I researched the process of return, the more I realized physical restitution was dead on arrival, stalled by bureaucratic processes and gatekeeping. Most people from the originating communities will never even get a visa to see their own history. That reality forced a deeper question. What are these museums actually holding hostage? It is not just the stone or the bronze. It is the meaning, the naming, and the power to tell the story.
I'm personally not a fan of the way "decolonization" is used as a performative buzzword today. Colonialism was a precise, calculated and highly systematic process of extraction. Undoing it cannot be a passive gesture. It requires an equally efficient process of renewal. I created looty.art to answer that need, to use digital technology as a tactical tool. We are de-linking our heritage from imperial archives and building sovereign spaces where our history is retold on our own terms.
Looty operates at the intersection of art, technology, and cultural heritage. How do these three fields inform one another in your practice?
I'm a student of Graphic Information Design at the University of Westminster, and I've worked in tech as a product designer for over ten years, for companies like Burberry, Artsy and Emirates Airlines. I have seen how the tech industry and Western heritage institutions share the same flaw. They exclude Black voices and the Global South, reducing rich cultural histories to static data for extraction. Traditional museums pause cultural heritage in time, leaving it to decay in basement archives or behind glass. Modern technology was promised as a savior, but it has become an engine of digital colonialism, driven by paywalls and Silicon Valley hype.
"Technology acts as the hammer that breaks the glass of the museum. Art is what re-animates that data."
If you look at the problem of looted heritage through a purely technological lens, the solution feels quite cold and sterile. A 3D scan on its own is just cold, lifeless data. This is where artistic practice becomes the key. Technology acts as the hammer that breaks the glass of the museum, extracting the spatial data of an artefact, but art is what re-animates that data. I truly believe that there are certain conversations we cannot have through normal conversation, and art is what allows us to have them. Drawing on indigenous Igbo epistemologies like the living spiritual energy of the Ikenga or the communal process of the Mbari house, art transforms code into something that feels politically and spiritually resonant. Technology provides the portal, but art makes sure heritage remains a living process rather than just another commodity. It's the merger of the two that creates something completely distinct, allowing these conversations to follow. And it gives them an active element through the interactivity of digital media.
Your work often speaks about "digital restitution." How do you define this concept, and what possibilities does it open that traditional restitution cannot?
It's interesting because restitution as a subject isn't something that directly relates to the arts. Traditional restitution is trapped at the state level. It is a slow, political, and bureaucratic process where originating nations have to ask permission from the same colonial countries that looted them.
I define digital restitution as an act of immediate sovereignty and counter-archival repair. It happens in real-time and bypasses state-level bureaucracy by stripping European museums of their monopoly over the data and the power to control the narrative.
Because digital assets are malleable and borderless, digital restitution creates possibilities that physical return simply cannot. It adds that missing link to the restitution debate: economic repair. Returning a physical bronze to a local museum is vital, but it does not account for a century of economic drain. By using digital technology and Web3, we attach transparent, automated economic mechanisms to these artifacts. Through an initiative called the Looty Fund, we redirect a portion of digital asset proceeds into grants for young African artists. That way, we can redefine restitution from a debate about past loss into an infrastructure for repair.
Many debates around restitution focus on returning physical objects. What role do you think digital technologies can play in expanding that conversation?
For me, digital technologies act as a spotlight on the hypocrisies of the universal museum model. Institutions like the British Museum claim to hold artifacts for humanity, yet they ignore the true restriction of access. At the very least, what I've seen is that the conversation is now able to be seen from a completely different angle. It has offered a new perspective on restitution that we didn't necessarily have before. Like I previously said, these conversations have been trapped at a state and institutional level.
Digital tools reframe the conversation by introducing the ethos of open-source culture. There's a lot to learn from the spirit of open source and the open web, where the emphasis on peer-to-peer sharing and collective access stands in opposition to imperial enclosure. By using LiDAR scanning, open-access 3D meshes, and decentralized networks, digital technologies do two things at once. They hold a torch up to institutional hoarding, proving that the universal museum is neither universal nor accessible. They also democratize the tools of archiving, putting the power of storytelling directly into the hands of global communities. This really poses a much more interesting solution to what we've seen in the past, which has largely been a conversation controlled by the institutions.
Do you see digital twins as documentation, artistic interpretation, or new cultural objects?
I don't see them as any single one. I would ask: why must a digital twin be confined to just one of these categories? The original artifacts were never single-dimensional. They were spiritual portals, musical instruments, and living tools of community life all at once. If we want to commune with the essence of our heritage, we have to bring that same multidimensional foundation into the digital realm.
For me, in my work, a digital twin operates as all three. It is documentation, providing a high-fidelity record of the physical artifact. It is an artistic interpretation, where we take raw point-cloud data and re-contextualize it into a new art piece. As a decentralized asset, it develops its own provenance, its own history of interaction, and its own agency. It becomes a piece of living culture that communities can own and use to fund future generations.
Many of your works engage with archives that have historically excluded or displaced certain voices. Can artistic practice become a form of archival repair?
Yes. I really see traditional colonial archives as static and one-way. They catalog the physical facts of what was extracted, but they are incapable of offering spiritual repair. The archive alone is simply incapable of the kind of interaction that artistic material can offer, like turning that static archive into living material.
I'd also say there is a very superficial "Digital Preservation" argument used as an excuse by institutions using digital scans as a fake substitute for physical return: "We gave you a 3D model, so we get to keep the physical bronze forever." This is a narrative that I completely reject, and I look for real ways to repair.
In my practice, repair is a multi-layered process. I start with a critical question and layer it across the physical, digital, and performative realms. I combine 3D spatial scans, AR, sound work and archival photo scans. Through this approach, it creates a space for emotional resonance and narrative renewal that a traditional museum cannot offer. This repair is as much about the viewer as it is about me as the artist. By breaking out of the traditional white-walled, plinth-and-glass museum display, we invite the viewer into an active experience, opening their minds to reclaiming agency and imagining decolonial futures.
Museums are increasingly exploring digital collections and virtual experiences. What opportunities excite you most, and what challenges still remain?
"How do we ensure a kid in Lagos has the same access to their ancestors' heritage as a kid in London?"
The opportunity that excites me is building the Meta-Museum, even though I resist the word museum itself, because it is a colonial construct designed for hoarding. What we are creating is a borderless, open-source cultural network. The goal is simple: how do we ensure a kid in Lagos has the same access to their ancestors' heritage as a kid in London?
This vision comes with critical challenges. We have to be conscious of the digital divide. High-fidelity 3D renderings require heavy bandwidth and expensive hardware. If we are not intentional, digital heritage will replicate Western gatekeeping. We must design lightweight, mobile-first tools. We also have to learn from the NFT and Web3 speculative craze. It was a crazy time, and though many projects were popular, they treated culture as a quick transaction and then collapsed. At looty.art, I choose to move deliberately, measuring the impact of every decision. I also think that, as artists, there is a need to redefine our relationship with big tech. Partnering with tech platforms, whether big tech or local developers, shouldn't mean handing them our cultural data for corporate exploitation. It must be a reciprocal, equal exchange, using their infrastructure to amplify access while retaining digital sovereignty and creative control.
Looking ahead, what direction do you see Looty taking over the next years?
Over the next few years, we are building and scaling our own ecosystem, the Meta-Museum. I want to move beyond old institutions and actively construct the space we want to see. This means creating modular, pop-up physical spaces and decentralized digital networks that can be deployed anywhere, from London to Lagos. To be honest, making the Meta-Museum a reality needs significant investment. For now, I am just working on making this dream a reality.
Looty has grown from a project into a platform and a wider ecosystem. Why did you choose looty.art as its digital home?
I think when you operate a digital platform that deals with code, Web3, and 3D data, it is easy for people to mistake it for just another tech tool. Choosing .art makes a statement. This platform is digital, but at its core, it is an artistic process.
Much of your practice explores ownership, access, and the digital future of cultural heritage. Do you see your digital presence, including your domain, as an extension of those ideas?
In short, no. It's a place for documentation and presentation of ideas; those ideas are not meant to live exclusively on a screen. While looty.art works as our digital entry point, my vision is fully realized at the intersection of the physical and digital realms.
Chidi also joined our Art Voices webinar series in conversation with Grant Yoon. Watch the full discussion: Is Art Changing, or Are We?
