Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: THE DELUSION

THE DELUSION combines satire and absurd humour with cooperative gaming and participatory theatre to explore the real-world impacts of societal division. Artist and game designer Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley invites visitors into a post-apocalyptic world shaped by a single catastrophic event—the Day of Division. In this imagined future, society has broken into closed, dogmatic factions, each clinging to its own version of truth, community, and survival. Conceived as a “live community play” and meeting space, the project aims to rehumanise debates and provide a space for players to pause, discuss and reconnect.

Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies, this is Brathwaite-Shirley’s most ambitious work to date — featuring a new series of video games and works developed collaboratively over the course of the past year with a team of artists, researchers, technologists and members of Danielle’s Black Trans and Queer community.

Visitors will be welcomed into an immersive installation designed in collaboration with Lydia Chan that blends the artists’ personal history, religious and spiritual symbols and elements of horror.