In an era where technology often distances us from our roots, Zainab Odemwingie, convinced that technology can accomplish remarkable feats like the opportunity to step into the past, developed the “Aruan the Giant” project. This groundbreaking Virtual Reality (VR) project, created by the digital artist, aims to transport viewers into the heart of Ancient Benin City. The three-minute recorded experience represents a few things VR can achieve when artistic vision meets cultural reverence.

The experience itself will be extraordinary. You find scenes standing of the viewer in the palace with “Aruan the Giant” as he sweeps gently with palm fronds. The attention to environmental detail and texture, from the surface of walls and other intricate patterns to the fabric, has been rendered with painstaking care. The genius of “Aruan the Giant” lies in its positioning of viewers with the giant. These virtual experiences invite genuine participation, and through these modern mediums, culture can be passed down through countless generations.

This project demonstrates that if the language flows naturally through conversations, with subtitle translations appearing only when necessary and other features, extended reality can be used to preserve the intangible aspects of cultural heritage. The creator understood that they needed to construct a bridge across time and distance. The decision to use VR recognises that culture is not merely observed but felt, practised, and lived. The narrative structure employed in this video follows the linear path; the experience itself will, however, provide better involvement as users will be able to explore at their own pace. The visual design deserves praise. The project includes a short folklore story of the giant for better understanding and engagement. This meta-layer enriches rather than interrupts the primary experience, modelling how technology can facilitate cross-cultural dialogue rather than appropriation.

“Aruan the Giant” arrived at a crucial moment for virtual reality as an artistic medium for the preservation of culture and heritage. After years of technological promise outpacing meaningful content, projects like this demonstrate what becomes possible when creators prioritise substance. This is genuine art that happens to employ virtual reality as its canvas, influencing the way we relate with culture.

For diaspora communities, “Aruan the Giant” and all such projects offer something precious: an opportunity to touch traditions that geography, history, and circumstance may have placed beyond physical reach. For all other viewers, it provides a window into worldviews and practices that deserve far greater visibility in our increasingly interconnected world. For the medium of virtual reality itself, it establishes a new benchmark for what cultural experiences can achieve and may hold some of the answers to the question of identity. After each experience, users will carry sounds, images, and emotional impressions that remain vivid. Zainab’s “Aruan the Giant” is a landmark achievement that announces virtual reality’s arrival as a serious artistic medium capable of fostering genuine human connection across the boundaries that too often divide us.

Painting Other Arts

I recognise Nneka Zainab Odemwingie as an artist with a rare combination of skills and one who carefully curates her subjects with emotional resonance. Zainab is also a curator, currently working on the Jephthah Ohiomokhare Sickle Cell Foundation Exhibitions for public advocacy on the blood donation drive. Zainab has a solid foundation in fine and applied art, and through a variety of techniques, she is able to create impactful art that reaches all audiences, physically or virtually, and these unique skills make her stand out as she produces works ranging from oil on canvas paintings exhibited internationally (like ‘Faces of Ancestry’ (2021) exhibited at TEDx Abuja, the Njabala Foundation Exhibition, Uganda, and ‘My African Baby’ (2025) exhibited at the Boomer Gallery, London) to comics (Aruan – The Giant Prince of Benin Kingdom – 2022) and animation videos, and has started to add QR codes to her artwork to give further details like cultural context or symbols.

Zainab dares to push boundaries and is a role model for female artists. She is currently in advanced conversations with a UK-based organisation on a project bordering on preservation of language, developing family trees, collaborating with London luxury fashion company Nosakhari on the production of culture-inspired fashion accessories, and the expansion of the virtual experience in collaboration with industry experts and historians to include experiences of folklore, ceremonies, events, ancient architecture, dances, musical instruments, and other aspects of the culture at risk of extinction. Zainab is also working on a series of paintings on the Bini artefacts and is sure to set new standards and lead the narrative in the near future.

The use of extended reality provides a world that breathes with life, activity, and purpose, offering genuine participation where users can learn language, dances, and listen to stories under the moonlight in open courtyards around bonfires or in the cool shade of a tree while an elder shares origin stories or legends teaching morals that can be passed down through countless generations. Users can feel the vibration of ceremonial drums through haptic feedback that transforms the physical body into part of the narrative. Ceremonial practices must, however, be presented with appropriate context and gravity, never reduced to spectacle or entertainment.

For example, when participating in the age-grade ceremony, watching the patterns being painted onto your virtual arms while elders sing blessings around you, the boundary between observer and participant dissolves entirely. With the use of unique acoustic properties combined with spatial audio technology, the result is complete auditory immersion that supports and enhances every visual element. This portal can lead further into explorations of markets and trade routes.

As a lecturer in Digital Media, I advocate for the inclusion of digital media in pedagogy as early as possible for further exploration of the opportunities that abound in the use of extended reality, including to preserve art, history, and culture. I also believe that the introduction of these virtual reality experiences into history courses will improve students’ understanding and engagement with culture and history.

Trevor Morgan teaches visual communication design and computer graphics at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from where he graduated with First Class Honours. A multivalent artist and scholar, his research and practice interests have dwelt on digital art, visual cultures, digital media production, 3D visualisation, and animation. These derive more from his training at Oxford Brookes University.

Dr Morgan of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, writes via [email protected]