Chidirim
Nwaubani
"If the originals cannot yet come home, their digital twins can — instantly, infinitely, and on the terms of the communities they belong to."
Artworks
Available Works
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Chidirim Nwaubani (b. Lagos, Nigeria) is a creative technologist and artist working between London and Lagos. His practice sits at the intersection of technology and culture — building digital experiences that blur the line between art and product.
In 2020 he founded LOOTY, a digital platform repatriating stolen African artefacts into the metaverse. Armed with LiDAR scanners, LOOTY staged a digital heist on the British Museum — capturing high-fidelity 3D scans of looted artefacts and reconstructing them as freely accessible digital objects, with blockchain provenance recorded on-chain.
His work has shown at the Venice Biennale Architettura (2023) and the London Design Biennale (2025), where Ogene MIDI — the Igbo Ogene reimagined as a playable, participatory instrument — received an Honorary Mention. Features include The Guardian and the BBC World Service.
Same same but different
Past Exhibitions
Headlines
- Featured in The Guardian: Rewriting Ownership — "a heist in reverse"Read →
- BBC World Service: on heritage, technology, and the digital twinListen →
- LOOTY NFT — Season Two mint is open, provenance on-chainMint →
- Fourteen new LiDAR scans join the Open ArchiveArchive →
Awards & Achievements
- Honorary Mention — Ogene MIDI, Ritual as AlgorithmLondon Design Biennale →
- Fair Floor Commission — Live ReconstructionArt Dubai →
- Official Selection — SA 'EY' AMA, To CommemorateVenice Biennale →
- First Digital Repatriation — Return RashidBenin Bronze →