Nigeria’s artistic and cultural legacy was stolen by an invading British military force in 1897. Today, those looted objects (aka the Benin Bronzes) remain on display in the Smithsonian, and other museums.

We wanted to honor the people of Benin by remembering them and create a way to experience their art beyond the museum.

Casting Memories confronts the impact and legacy of looted art and white supremacy in museums through the perspective and intimate experience of a Nigerian artist / technologist / scammer learning about their stolen history and identity through the Benin Bronzes in the Smithsonian collections. To illustrate how creativity can be used to transform, reclaim and remix painful memories into liberative, new media, the project also presents a series of open-source, downloadable 3D art objects inspired by the collection.

TEAM MEMBERS: Mayowa Tomori — Project Lead; Michael Runge — 3D Artist; Rita Troyer — Web Designer; Olivia Cueva — 3D Researcher; and Olu Gbadebo — Machine Learning Researcher

This project received the Mozilla Creative Media Award and an award from the Interaction Lab at the Smithsonian.

Learn more about the project here.

Read my 3D scanning research notes here.