Guests should make tough selections in Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s exhibition The Delusion, which opens at this time at Serpentine North in London (till 18 January 2026). London-born Brathwaite-Shirley, a Berlin-based artist and online game designer, has created a collection of multiplayer video video games that invite “gamers to look at their very own moral, political and ethical selections whereas contemplating broader societal constructions and histories of marginalisation”, says an exhibition textual content.
For The Unifier sport, gamers should place their palms on a desk and work collectively to maneuver a ball by means of maze-like constructions whereas pondering points reminiscent of “What ought to be censored?” The aim of this communal train is to “rehumanise connection and allow trustworthy alternate”, provides the exhibition textual content.
The set up is well timed within the wake of geo-political ruptures in Western society, with populist events on the rise throughout Europe and President Trump clamping down on range and fairness initiatives at US museums.
Brathwaite-Shirley feels we’re in a second the place the power to talk freely is being curtailed. “It appears like we will’t have a dialogue with out risking one thing anymore,” Brathwaite-Shirley tells The Artwork Newspaper. “It feels as a substitute like we include a ready opinion relatively than making an attempt to determine what we really assume and that’s an issue.”
In one other sport, entitled The Validators, individuals reply by capturing lamp-shaped weapons at a display screen whereas directions flash up on a display screen reminiscent of: “Elevate your hand in the event you really feel nervous about censorship.” Brathwaite-Shirley says: “We now have taken an arcade shooter and made it right into a contemplative pondering sport relatively than a violent sport. There are three ranges—one stage touches on censorship, one other on dehumanisation and one other on hope.” The work incorporates factual and fictional content material drawn from the every day information cycle.
An set up view of The Validators
© Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Picture: Hugo Glendinning
The exhibition, organised by the Serpentine’s know-how arm (Serpentine Arts Applied sciences), highlights the Twenty first-century crossover between video video games and the visible arts. “I’ve all the time seen video games as artwork. I used to be taking a look at a sport known as Frontier: Elite II, made in 1989—I take a look at previous video games as items of artwork and take a look at them the identical as somebody would possibly research a Rembrandt,” Brathwaite-Shirley says.
The video video games have been developed collaboratively with a crew of artists, researchers, technologists and members of Brathwaite-Shirley’s Black trans and queer group, based on a press release. The exhibition, by means of among the query posed by its video games, builds on Brathwaite-Shirley’s ongoing work archiving Black trans histories: in 2020, the artist based the Black trans archive—a first-person sport that features as an archive, turning the concept of conventional repositories on their head.
