“Is it stealing to take back what was stolen?” That’s the question asked in the trailer for “Relooted,” a video game in which players form a crew and plan a heist to reclaim real-life African artifacts held in Western museums.
Created by South African game developer Nyamakop, the game, to be released on PC and Xbox, is set in a futuristic Johannesburg, South Africa. The crew is composed of scientists, computer programmers and MMA fighters — rather than seasoned criminals — and guided by the fictitious Professor Grace, a retired South African art historian frustrated by the glacial rate of restitutions.
There are hundreds of thousands of African artifacts held in Western collections. As European countries colonized Africa, they took art and valuables. Some, such as the Benin Bronzes, were taken by force. This collection of thousands of sculptures and plaques once adorned the royal palace in the Kingdom of Benin, in modern day Nigeria, and was taken by British soldiers in 1897.
Some African artifacts were acquired through coercion and others were bought.
Precise numbers are hard to ascertain, but a 2009 report from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimated that 90-95% of sub-Saharan Africa’s art is held outside of the continent. The impact of their absence has been immense, Chika Okeke-Agulu, professor of art history at Princeton University, told CNN. It would be like European civilization “without all the cultural artifacts of Greece, Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the Renaissance,” he said.
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