Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley & Josèfa Ntjam at FACT

FACT presents the final instalment of the Radical Ancestry programme, exploring concepts of roots and belonging, with the new show by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley & Josèfa Ntjam.

Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley focuses on Black trans people in her practice along with other underrepresented communities. The key driving force behind the work is the desire to archive the experience of Black trans people from the past and present, by creating worlds that centre their bodies.

For the show and using her tools of world-building and games, she has been working with a group of young people from Liverpool since February, self titled ‘The Bandidos’, which explored their experiences of life in Liverpool via a new, online world. The collaboration has resulted in a large-scale immersive environment  When Our Worlds Meet (2022), which was initiated with the questions: how would you redesign Liverpool for your community? What does your world need? And, what rules does your world have?
The piece can be experienced in the gallery as well as online, taking the viewer through a series of locations and portals, from a bus shelter to a living room.

Artist, writer and performer Josèfa Ntjam is interested in alternative histories and works across different mediums, including video, sculpture and sound. Her pieces and the characters within them are described by one curator as under “perpetual reconfiguration” and this is a key element of Ntjam’s work: the personas created by the artist dissolve and shift and by doing so, encompass a multitude of voices, experiences, myths and memories.

The show at FACT features her film Dislocation (2022), alongside new sculptures as part of her Metamorphosis (2019-present) series. The artist rejects Western narratives around heritage and identity by drawing on archives and African mythologies.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events, including artist talks, curator tours and family workshops.