Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

Gaming Salon and Testing Session

Join current artist-in-residence Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, for an afternoon of game play, testing and feedback. This informal gaming salon will provide an opportunity to collectively play and feedback on some of Brathwaite-Shirley’s favourite video games, as well as engaging with the artist's own games and works-in-progress using Meta Quest 2 headsets.

Games being tested include Death Stranding PS4, Resident Evil 4 Oculus Quest, King's Field PS1, Final Fantasy XV PS4, Season: A Letter to the Future PS4, Wii Sports Wii and Cruelty Squad PC.

Brathwaite-Shirley works predominantly in animation, sound, performance and video games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Her practice focuses on intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories and build an ongoing archive of erased Trans lives for the past, present and future.

The expansive thematics of Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice include digital real-estate, archiving and the exclusion and subjugation of Black and Brown Trans bodies in digital space. Technology is at the forefront of her practice, and the residency will provide time to further study the history of gaming, its role as an art form and educational tool, and the innovative use of VR space as a site for debate and critical discussion.

The event will serve as research and development for Brathwaite-Shirley’s forthcoming solo commission at Studio Voltaire in January 2024.

Headline Sponsor Meta Open Arts

Danielle Brathwaite–Shirley (b. 1995, UK) lives and works between London and Berlin. In 2020, Brathwaite-Shirley produced a solo performance at Tate Modern, London. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Focal Point Gallery, London (2020); Science Gallery, London (2020), MU Hybrid Art House, London (2020), arebyte, London (2022) and FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology), Liverpool (2022). Group exhibitions include Re$$urection Lands, Les Urbaines, Lausanne, Switzerland (2019); BBZ GRADUATE SHOW, Copeland Gallery, London (2019); and Transpose: The Future, Barbican, London (2018).
Meta Open Arts empowers artists and builds community through creativity. Founded in 2010, Meta Open Arts partners with cultural organizations and collaborates with artists and designers around the world, providing resources to maximize creativity and bring people closer together in an increasingly tech-driven and digitally based world. Meta Open Arts believes that art has the ability to offer new ways of thinking about ourselves, our communities and the world at large.

Learn more at fb.com/metaopenarts and @MetaOpenArts on Instagram.
Image courtesy the artist. We Keep Each Other Living, 2022. Blender and Procreate.

Free

Sunday 2 April 2023, 2–5 pm

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Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

Gaming Salon and Testing Session

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