Guests should make tough choices in Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s exhibition The Delusion, which opens as we speak 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 buildings and histories of marginalisation”, says an exhibition textual content.
For The Unifier sport, gamers should place their arms on a desk and work collectively to maneuver a ball via maze-like buildings whereas pondering points comparable to “What ought to be censored?” The aim of this communal train is to “rehumanise connection and allow trustworthy trade”, 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 variety 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 looks like we are able to’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 somewhat than attempting to determine what we really suppose and that’s an issue.”
In one other sport, entitled The Validators, individuals reply by capturing lamp-shaped weapons at a display whereas directions flash up on a display comparable to: “Increase your hand in the event you really feel frightened about censorship.” Brathwaite-Shirley says: “We now have taken an arcade shooter and made it right into a contemplative pondering sport somewhat than a violent sport. There are three ranges—one degree 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 expertise arm (Serpentine Arts Applied sciences), highlights the Twenty first-century crossover between video video games and the visible arts. “I’ve at all times seen video games as artwork. I used to be a sport known as Frontier: Elite II, made in 1989—I have a look at previous video games as items of artwork and have a look at them the identical as somebody may examine a Rembrandt,” Brathwaite-Shirley says.
The video video games had been developed collaboratively with a staff of artists, researchers, technologists and members of Brathwaite-Shirley’s Black trans and queer group, based on a press release. The exhibition, via a number of 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 thought of conventional repositories on their head.
