London and Berlin-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley has been selected for The Artsy Vanguard 2026, recognizing her as one of the most promising contemporary artists poised to become a future leader in art and culture. The recognition comes as Brathwaite-Shirley experiences a meteoric rise in the art world, culminating in her major solo exhibition "The Delusion" at London's prestigious Serpentine Galleries.
Brathwaite-Shirley's work combines fearless exploration of disturbing topics with distinctive low-fi aesthetics to provoke what she calls "difficult conversations." Her interactive video artwork "I DIDN'T REALISE YOU THOUGHT LIKE THAT" (2025) exemplifies this approach. The piece features a series of fictional characters asking viewers to let them into a room, with the handle serving as a game controller attached to a full-scale physical door embedded with a screen. The moral dilemma becomes apparent when one pixelated, grotesque character expresses belief in bringing back segregation, forcing viewers to question whether keeping the door closed constitutes an act of segregation itself.
"The Delusion" exhibition, which opened last month, showcases Brathwaite-Shirley's inventive and uncompromising vision of contemporary reality. The show includes video games, videos, lightboxes, and drawings, following significant commissions previously exhibited at Berlin's Berghain and London's Piccadilly Circus. The exhibition space is deliberately designed based on the layout of her grandmother's house and filled with domestic items like rugs and ornate chairs, creating an intimate atmosphere for challenging conversations.
The artist's primary goal is audience engagement and dialogue. "Many of her video game works prompt gallery visitors to confess things—fears, anxieties, mistakes—out loud," she explained. Brathwaite-Shirley deliberately pushes viewers to excavate shameful feelings and confront difficult topics including "dehumanization, war crimes, God, censorship, fascism, gender, the changing political landscape." She believes that "today, it feels like there's no place to have a conversation to figure out what you think," and aims to "build a space that lets you have those hard conversations, even if what you're saying I may not agree with."
Each of Brathwaite-Shirley's exhibitions begins with a wallpaper text work setting unusual expectations for viewers. "TERMS AND CONDITIONS" (2025) uses retro 8-bit font to instruct visitors to "speak, listen, and respond," ending with reassurance that "You are not being recorded." This creates what she describes as a safe space to discuss the implications of beliefs without repercussions.
Throughout her career, Brathwaite-Shirley has consistently asked taboo questions. Her game "Blacktranssea" (2021) asks players "who were your ancestors?" requiring self-identification as either colonizers or those who were carried across the sea. In a 2024 performance at the Tate Modern—part video art, part quasi-religious ritual—she asked audiences to identify their political beliefs to determine the direction of her performance. "The audience is my medium," she states, emphasizing her commitment to creating experiential art.
Brathwaite-Shirley's early career centered on performance art. After graduating from London's Slade School of Fine Art in 2019, she had already presented solo performances at prestigious venues including Raven Row and the Barbican. These early shows featured the artist singing odes to Black trans life accompanied by projections of her trademark digital animations.
Her fascination with video games began in childhood when she discovered her father's floppy disks. Initially unaware they were playable applications, she repeatedly read their illustrated, story-filled manuals until she began "dreaming in their 8-bit graphics." These low-resolution visuals continue to influence her work today. She maintains a DIY aesthetic she calls "crispy," explaining that "everything looks like someone's hand has done it." All games in the Serpentine exhibition were created from scratch using open-source software not intended for video games, and she chose personal connections rather than professional voice actors.
The Black trans community plays a central role in Brathwaite-Shirley's practice. "I just feel like that community has got me through everything," she said. She honors this community in works like "Black Trans Archive" (2020-23), a sprawling interactive web-based collage documenting the historical eradication of Black trans voices. Rather than presenting conventional biographies, the website takes visitors on an eccentric, somber journey through trans experiences, leading them to digital locations such as "Dead name burial site," "Trans temple," and "Cis city."
Recent work responds directly to contemporary legal challenges, including the UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of gender, which Brathwaite-Shirley summarizes as "basically, that trans women aren't women." Her commissioned work "Trans and conditions" (2025) for CIRCA consists of a website asking visitors to create letters sharing their support for trans people.
Personal trauma deeply informs her artistic approach. The exhibition includes "WATCHERS" (2025), a group of digital portraits based on people in her community who have influenced her. These meaningful personalities are transformed into monsters through collaged photographs and pixelated text. This "monster-fying" technique developed as a response to street harassment: "someone telling me on the street that I should be shot for being trans," she recalled matter-of-factly. "I was trying to see if I could find some power in this idea of being seen as a monster or a demon."
Her "REACTIONARY WORKS" ink drawing series applies this monster aesthetic to intensely dark, personal responses to current events. These works feature rapacious, neckless beasts annotated with shocking opinions, confrontational questions, and expressions of sorrow. One speech bubble reads "I pretend to care if it makes me look good," emerging from a six-eyed, grimacing mutant. The drawings address porn, suicide, censorship, and war, with Brathwaite-Shirley describing them as "basically my diary."
The interactive element extends to visitor participation through what the exhibition plan labels as a "safe room." Here, viewers can explore zines, critical texts, and other works that informed Brathwaite-Shirley's practice while filling empty sketchbooks with their immediate thoughts and drawings. Serpentine staff report that visitors have been filling approximately one book per day since the show opened, with pages revealing both surreal scribbles and dark confessions about the state of the world—exactly the kind of openness Brathwaite-Shirley hopes will translate to new attitudes beyond the gallery walls.
The Artsy Vanguard recognition marks its eighth year of highlighting promising contemporary artists. As 2026 approaches, the program celebrates ten talents positioned to become future leaders of contemporary art and culture, with Brathwaite-Shirley standing out for her unique approach to interactive, socially engaged art that challenges audiences to confront uncomfortable truths about society and themselves.
