DANIA SHIHAB
O MUSEU COMO PERFORMANCE
REPLICA – RELIC
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Performance, 40’
Ceramics: Helena Civit Kopeinig
Arduino Programming: Nico Saganias
3D printing: Dania Shihab
STL reconstruction assistant: Abishav Singh
Object photos: Cecilia Diaz Betz
Replica - Relic confronts the performative gestures of decolonization in Western cultural institutions — most markedly at the British Museum — and questions their sincerity in addressing historical wrongs. Dania rejects the museumʼs custodial authority by reanimating cultural heritage through an act of sonic and tactile sovereignty. Without institutional permission, Dania clandestinely 3D-captured Mesopotamian artifacts at the British Museum. From these digital fragments, five entirely scratch-built musical instruments emerged, each a fragmented echo of its ancestral form. In live performance Dania brings forth the latent voices embedded in these artifacts, invoking the lost landscapes from which they originated.
Each instrument functions as an artifact and as an amplifying vessel. The performance inhabits the interstice between past and present — making the archived audible, tactile, and unbound. The collaboration with ceramics by Helena Civit Kopeinig, Arduino programming by Nico Saganias, 3D printing by the artist themselves converge to produce a ceremony of rescue and reverberation.
Coproduction: Project carried out as part of the Barcelona Producció de La Capella programme, with touring by the Paracaigudisme programme of Club 9
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Dania Shihab (Baghdad, 1982) is a transnational artist, musician, curator, and emergency physician based in Barcelona. She holds a degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Tasmania (Australia). As a sound artist, her practice focuses on identity, borders, and displacement from the experience of forced migration. Using samples and field recordings and employing the voice as a tool of cultural and gender agency, she composes long-form electroacoustic pieces. Since 2014 she has directed the Paralaxe Editions platform, where she releases experimental music and curates performances across Europe. In 2023, Paralaxe Editions became an orbiting resident at Hangar, Barcelona. She has presented work at festivals and venues such as Sonic Acts, Sónar, Mira, She Makes Noise, and Cafe Oto. She has published several musical works linked to her migrant experience and cultural identity in transition, including Voz (2022) and Foreign Body (2023). In 2024 she completed a five-week residency in Providenza, Communities Between Islands (Sardinia Corsica and Syros), where she mapped the land-sea interface and explored its impact on the concept of border in migrant communities. She was selected as a SHAPE+ artist for innovative audiovisual art ʼ24 25.