Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley works in the fields of animation, sound, performance, archive and video game development. The artist presents their work online, such as with Factory Manchester, or in exhibitions at MoMA in New York, the Barbican Centre in London and the Kunsthalle Geneva, among others. Brathwaite-Shirley often takes a journey back into colonial history and shows its effects on contemporary societies. With “Resurrection Lands”, playable for a short period on HAU4, the artist returns to HAU after 2022 and 2023.

The online game deals with the effects of “trans tourism”. Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley uses this term to describe the voyeuristic way in which Black trans people are portrayed and criticises the exploitation of painful and traumatic experiences of Black people through this behaviour: They are thus robbed of their history and need a way to reclaim it.

In “Resurrection Lands”, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley uses speculative fiction to give Black trans ancestors their place in history back: “We have discovered advanced technology to scan the earth and digitally bring back the buried memories of Black trans ancestors.” But the archive of “Resurrection Lands” does not remain a place of adequate remembrance for long. History takes a different course than desired ...