THE DELUSION by artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is presented at Serpentine North until 18 January 2026. Placing the audience at the heart of the experience, the project invites participants to pause and discuss important themes of censorship, polarisation and societal divisions.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley said: “Art should provide a safe space for grappling with real issues without anxiety or fear but we’re in danger of losing that. THE DELUSION is an exercise of anti-censorship. It’s an exercise of freedom to speak out and question things to make an environment for other people to feel like they can do the same. It expands my concern with social and historical erasure, but it’s also a challenge to myself – not to erase certain conversations, people or views that I may disagree with. The work is a place to view yourself and a mirror of society – and it’s messy! I’m focused on what archives can do and how they can function. How they can be used to allow people to process life and not be something that’s stuck in the past or on the screen. THE DELUSION centres the decisions, actions and change happening in the gallery itself.”

Conceived as a live “community play” and meeting space, THE DELUSION combines satire and absurd humour with cooperative gaming and participatory theatre. It brings together artists, researchers, technologists and members of Brathwaite-Shirley’s Black Trans and Queer community.

This project continues Serpentine’s engagement and support of  Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice, including a significant period of R&D in 2021, developing prototypes and experimental hybrid gaming projects including WE CAN’T DO THIS ALONE, YOUR PRESENCE ALONE CHANGES HOW OTHERS BREATHE, and THE LACK, co-commissioned by Art Night, NeON Digital Arts and Serpentine Arts Technologies for Art Night Dundee 2023.  

The project marks the continuation of Serpentine Arts Technologies’ ongoing commitment to exploring the creative and civic potential of video game technologies. An area of focus for the department is game engines and expanded forms of gaming that exist between both digital and physical contexts. Previous projects have included: Ian Cheng, Bad Corgi (2015) and B.O.B. (2018), Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Catharsis (2020); Trust, Hivemind (2022), and Gabriel Massan & Collaborators, Third World: The Bottom Dimension (2023) that has been touring since its first presentation at Serpentine North in 2023. 

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley continues: “THE DELUSION is about having difficult conversations. How can we use interactivity to offer a space for this? How can we make galleries functional again, supporting what emerges during a show as the work itself?  We’re working at a weird frontier of games, trying to break the expectations for games to be fun. Rather than a place to lose yourselves in, this game facilitates an environment I’m calling a ‘human engine’, that allows people to work through difficult emotions and feelings. We’re using game engines and interactivity to pull people out of the virtual world and instead allow them to ground themselves in the physical world and what’s going on at this present moment. The work is not about what’s in the games, it’s about what comes out of people’s mouths, enabling new connections and conversations in real-time.”

Visitors are initiated into the experience through a set of Terms and Conditions that open the exhibition. At its centre are a collection of new multiplayer video games that function as portals through which players can enter deeper into this speculative world. 

THE DELUSION brillantly archives recent news headlines and social media posts, conversations with spiritual leaders and social activists, and testimonies from Brathwaite-Shirley’s community, alongside the artist’s own autobiographical notes, to reflect wide-ranging and diverse perspectives. 
–

Image: THE DELUSION, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, photography: Hugo Glendinning and Portrait of Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Photography Talie Rose Eigeland.