Doyle Wham Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition by radical artivist collective LOOTY, founded by Chidi Nwaubani.
Notice of Reclamation — art’otel London Hoxton (EC2A 3DT), 12–25 October 2026, during Frieze Art Week.
The exhibition is a comprehensive look at Nwaubani’s recent practice, featuring his award-winning work from the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, pieces exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and the recent ABC documentary Stuff the British Stole: The Rosetta Code.
Rooted in critical museology, African epistemologies and digital practice, Nwaubani’s work interrogates the extraction and archiving of African cultural heritage. The exhibition’s central installation, Mbari Memorial, proposes a shift from object-centred preservation toward collective, living forms of cultural recovery.
Mbari Memorial
Drawing from the Nigerian Igbo tradition of Mbari houses — sacred architectures built collectively as offerings to the earth goddess Ala, and historically eradicated under British colonial rule — the installation features interactive ogene sculptures cast in bronze and presented on informal-market bottle crates.
To challenge the museum’s mandate of distance, the sculptures act as conductive interfaces: when participants make physical contact with the artwork and one another, they complete an electrical circuit. This activation generates a unique digital sculpture for the participants — downloadable with no usage restrictions — reframing restitution as a collective, imaginative labour.
What cannot be returned intact must be collectively rethought.
