Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (English, b. 1995) creates interactive video games, animation, sound, and performance that archive Black Trans experience.,Working predominantly in game engines, the artist creates immersive installations that ask audiences to make choices determining whether they protect or endanger Black Trans characters.Brathwaite-Shirley was born in London and lives and works between London and Berlin.,
Brathwaite-Shirley graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2019, having already presented solo performances at venues including Raven Row and the Barbican.In 2020 the Science Gallery in London commissioned Black Trans Archive, a game-based work created from interviews with twelve Black Trans people.The following year, “SHE KEEPS ME DAMN ALIVE” at arebyte Gallery extended earlier web-based archiving projects into a point-and-shoot arcade game that asks players to protect the game's protagonist across three levels: water, city and dungeon.
At the Helsinki Biennial 2023, the artist presented a role-playing installation exploring a speculative Black trans mythology of Vallisaari Island, with an online counterpart.That year Brathwaite-Shirley's work also appeared in “Difference Machines”, a touring survey of technology and identity at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago.In 2025 Public Gallery presented a trio of the artist's interactive video works centering Black trans experience in the Focus section of Frieze New York.The Victoria and Albert Museum has collected Brathwaite-Shirley's work as part of its digital design holdings.
Serpentine North Gallery opened “The Delusion” in 2025, a video game commission and multiplayer installation produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies after four years of collaboration with a curatorial team led by Tamar Clarke-Brown.,Set in a post-apocalyptic world following a fictional Day of Division, the piece uses everyday objects, including a cupboard door, a tilting table and table lamps, as game controllers so visitors without gaming experience can take part. Brathwaite-Shirley has traced an interest in audience participation to watching performers rework their acts for tips at an east London burlesque club, and has named video artist Rebecca Allen and game designer Muriel Tramis among the artist's influences.
In 2025 the exhibition “UNCENSORED” at NOME in Berlin marked a departure from a decade-long practice centered on archiving Black trans life through video games, sound and performance, foregrounding raw ink drawings and paintings about self-censorship around subjects including abortion, Gaza and fascism. Brathwaite-Shirley has continued to work with open-source, DIY software, including Blender, Godot, Twine and Inform 7, producing a deliberately low-resolution look across games such as I Can't Remember a Time I Didn't Need You (2020) and GET HOME SAFE.
