The Other Nefertiti
'The most ethical art heist', 2016
Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles (IQ & DE)
The Nefertiti Bust is an ancient Egyptian sculpture discovered by a German archaeological team in 1912; it is currently on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin. In 2016, artists Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles secretly scanned the bust using a hacked Kinect as a portable scanner. The artists released their data from the scan during the Chaos Computer Congress 32C3, and it has since been downloaded and shared countless times. The artists also 3D-printed a version of the data and exhibited the printed bust in Cairo — and thus Nefertiti was shown for the first time in Egypt.
BIO
Nora is a multi-disciplinary artist with a German-Iraqi background; she was born 1984 in Marburg an der Lahn. She lives and works in Berlin. She studied visual art at Offenbach University of Art and Design and graduated in political sciences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. Nikolai is a multi-disciplinary German artist born 1980 in Frankfurt/Main. He graduated from Offenbach University of Art and Design in 2011. In the past, he founded an independent project space in Frankfurt/Main and co-founded a photography magazine. The artist duo have worked together for eight years.