Press Release: Trans & Conditions, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
CIRCA PRESENTS DANIELLE BRATHWAITE-SHIRLEY’S
MULTI-PLATFORM COMMISSION AMPLIFYING
TRANS SOLIDARITY ACROSS THE UK
(CIRCA 20:25) 22 May, 2025 ➳ CIRCA presents Trans & Conditions, a major new commission by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Unfolding across digital, physical, and public platforms, the multi-media project confronts the systems that govern how trans lives are recognised, controlled, and remembered — offering space for both discomfort and solidarity.
“We’re seeing a real crack in the structures we live in,” the artist says. “In these moments, you get a lot of people realising that they can push back just because they literally have to. This happens a lot in history: you don’t resist until you must; it feels like we’re reaching that point where we must.”
Broadcasting at 20:25 BST on Piccadilly Lights every evening until 17 June 2025, the work appears as a three-minute animated intervention, echoing the digital language of glitching alerts, pop-up warnings, and early internet systems. The result is a screen-based work that mimics a system under pressure — warning, waiting, and quietly demanding attention.
At the heart of the commission is transandconditions.com, an interactive platform guiding the public through a series of reflective prompts — including “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY TO THE TRANS PEOPLE WHO ARE SCARED RIGHT NOW?” — culminating in the creation of a public letter. These letters are archived as collective expressions of care, witness, and shared voice.
Created in response to the UK Supreme Court’s recent redefinition of “woman” under the Equality Act, the work uses digital space to pose urgent questions: Who gets to speak? Who is remembered? And under what conditions are trans lives permitted to exist?
To accompany the commission, CIRCA presents a series of four limited-edition screen prints by Brathwaite-Shirley — each a powerful declaration of trans autonomy, urgency, and resistance. 20% of proceeds from each print will be donated to the Trans Legal Clinic, a community-led initiative providing vital legal support and advocacy for trans people in the UK.
According to Stonewall, two-thirds of trans people in the UK avoid being open about their gender identity due to fear of discrimination, and nearly half have experienced a hate crime in the past 12 months. Trans & Conditions offers no spectacle — only space: to listen, to speak, to remember.
In partnership with UNCLE, a selection of these letters will appear throughout the summer as fly-posters in public spaces across London. Later this year, the full archive will be compiled and delivered to No.10 Downing Street as a symbolic gesture of collective testimony.
Trans & Conditions is not just a response to erasure — it is a declaration of presence, possibility, and creative defiance.
NOTES TO EDITORS
ABOUT DANIELLE BRATHWAITE-SHIRLEY
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (b. 1995, London) is a Berlin/London-based artist. They received an BA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2019. Brathwaite-Shirley works predominantly in animation, sound, performance, and video game development. Their practice focuses on intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell the stories of Black Trans people. Danielle’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions and performances at institutions such as Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2024), LAS, Burghein berlin (2024), ,Studio Voltaire (2024), SCAD, Savanna (2023) Artnight Dundee (2023) Villa Arson, Nice (2023) Fact, Liverpool (2022) David Kordansky, LA (2022) Project Arts Centre, Ireland (2022); Skänes konstförening, Malmö, Sweden (2022); Arebyte Gallery, London (2021); QUAD, Derby, England (2021); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2021); Focal Point Gallery, London (2020); Science Gallery, London (2020); and MU Hybrid Art House, London (2020). Their work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin (2022); Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich (2019); Les Urbaines, Lausanne (2019); and Barbican, London (2018). Visit daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com
ABOUT UNCLE
UNCLE brings the paper, paste and attitude to city streets around the world. They combine their deep local knowledge with decades of global experience to create powerful street advertising campaigns that give clients and collaborators the most credible visibility in the most influential cities such as London, New York, Paris, Milan, Berlin, Amsterdam, plus many more. UNCLE champions creativity and culture in all its forms both in their commercial work and through collaborations to support creative communities within the cities in which it operates. UNCLE is the Global Street Advertising Agency. Visit manfromuncle.inf
ABOUT CIRCA
CIRCA is a cultural platform for the 21st century. Founded by Josef O’Connor in 2020, CIRCA connects art and technology with the public to create new rituals for a global audience. Hijacking the world’s most iconic city screens, CIRCA commissions leading artists to pause the adverts — and the noise — creating spaces for urgency, imagination, and dialogue. Sales of artist editions fund a circular economy of public art, scholarships, grants, and the annual CIRCA PRIZE — reinvesting creativity back into the community. CIRCA is a movement, a question, a mirror to the world we live in — and the world still to come.
Since launching in 2020, CIRCA has commissioned and exhibited works by some of the world’s most influential and visionary artists, including AA Bronson, Agnes Denes, Ai Weiwei, Alfredo Jaar, Alvaro Barrington, Anne Imhof, Arca, Cauleen Smith, the Dalai Lama, David Hockney, Douglas Gordon, Emma Talbot, Frank Bowling, Gilbert & George, Hetain Patel, Laurie Anderson, Marina Abramović, Olafur Eliasson, Patti Smith, Pussy Riot, Shirin Neshat, Vivienne Westwood, and Yoko Ono. For more information, visit circa.art
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