![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/7a33bc0612b339bb5e25785f87cd297096282ad6-8640x5760.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nVisitors will have to make difficult decisions in Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley\u2019s exhibition The Delusion, which opens today at Serpentine North in London (until 18 January 2026). London-born Brathwaite-Shirley, a Berlin-based artist and video game designer, has created a series of multiplayer video games that invite \u201cplayers to examine their own ethical, political and moral choices while considering broader societal structures and histories of marginalisation\u201d, says an exhibition text.<\/p>\n
For The Unifier game, players must place their hands on a table and work together to move a ball through maze-like structures while pondering issues such as \u201cWhat should be censored?\u201d The purpose of this communal exercise is to \u201crehumanise connection and enable honest exchange\u201d, adds the exhibition text.<\/p>\n
The installation is timely in the wake of geo-political ruptures in Western society, with populist parties on the rise across Europe and President Trump clamping down on diversity and equity initiatives at US museums. <\/p>\n
Brathwaite-Shirley feels we are in a moment where the ability to speak freely is being curtailed. \u201cIt feels like we can\u2019t have a discussion without risking something anymore,\u201d Brathwaite-Shirley tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cIt feels instead like we come with a prepared opinion rather than trying to figure out what we actually think and that\u2019s a problem.\u201d <\/p>\n
In another game, entitled The Validators, participants respond by shooting lamp-shaped guns at a screen while instructions flash up on a screen such as: \u201cRaise your hand if you feel worried about censorship.\u201d Brathwaite-Shirley says: \u201cWe have taken an arcade shooter and made it into a contemplative thinking game rather than a violent game. There are three levels\u2014one level touches on censorship, another on dehumanisation and another on hope.\u201d The work incorporates factual and fictional content drawn from the daily news cycle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An installation view of The Validators<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Photo: Hugo Glendinning<\/p>\n
The exhibition, organised by the Serpentine\u2019s technology arm (Serpentine Arts Technologies), highlights the 21st-century crossover between video games and the visual arts. \u201cI\u2019ve always seen games as art. I was looking at a game called Frontier: Elite II, made in 1989\u2014I look at old games as pieces of art and look at them the same as someone might study a Rembrandt,\u201d Brathwaite-Shirley says.<\/p>\n
The video games were developed collaboratively with a team of artists, researchers, technologists and members of Brathwaite-Shirley\u2019s Black trans and queer community, according to a statement. The exhibition, through some of the question posed by its games, builds on Brathwaite-Shirley’s ongoing work archiving Black trans histories: in 2020, the artist founded the Black trans archive\u2014a first-person game that functions as an archive, turning the idea of traditional repositories on their head. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visitors will have to make difficult decisions in Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley\u2019s exhibition The Delusion, which opens today at Serpentine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4845,4884,257,5843,154457,16,15,1644],"class_list":{"0":"post-461326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-exhibitions","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-serpentine-gallery","14":"tag-trans-non-binary-artists","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-video-games"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115289544348771597","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}