It began with a legal question. Before making anything, Chidi Nwaubani consulted a lawyer to ask whether a digital form of the Rosetta Stone, held in the British Museum since it was taken from Egypt, was even possible to make.
How can we steal back something that was already stolen? Is that even possible?
The answer set the concept. Reusing the museum's photograph would be illegal, because the museum owns the image, but its own terms permit 3D scans. A legal investigation became the artwork's method.
Stealing back the aura
Under the collective name Looty, Nwaubani and Ahmed Abokor walked into the British Museum and captured a LiDAR scan of the stone on an iPad Pro, then cleaned it into a digital canvas of the Rosetta Stone.
Soon after, the team flew to Egypt and used geolocated augmented reality, the technology behind location games, to place the stone back in Rashid. Anyone who visits can now use their phone to see it standing where it once did.
I'm trying to steal back the aura, the soul of this artefact. Now and forever, it will be there in its position.
The return of story
The physical objects are left to governments. The work is about the return of agency, the return of power, and the return of story, a claim that the right to steward a culture's own artefacts belongs with its people.
Written by Chidirim Nwaubani — 2024
