Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

London

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley uses digital and interactive media technology (animation, sound and video games) to archive the experiences of Black trans people and, in the artist’s words, ‘imagine our lives in environments that centre our bodies’. Her projects are available online, but are also exhibited in gallery settings. Last year, the Science Gallery in London hosted We Are Here Because of Those That Are Not (2020), an animated film that explores, via a ‘choose your own adventure’-style game, the decisions faced by trans people regarding medical intervention on their bodies. Brathwaite-Shirley has performed at Tate Modern and the Barbican; the artist is also currently working on an exhibition for Arebyte Gallery, ‘She Keeps Me Damn Alive’ (18 November–19 February 2022), which takes as its starting point her interactive online work, the Black Trans Archive (blacktransarchive.com), and transforms it into an arcade game.