Click here to visit the exhibition on our Wysing Broadcasts site

We are pleased to launch an online exhibition of work by British Council Net//Work Residency artists
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley,
Uma Breakdown, and Leyya Mona Tawil, presented on our Wysing 
Broadcasts site 4 May - 7 June. 

The exhibition will draw on the development of the artists’ digital research during the residency. From games to interactive audio and film, the exhibition will present these very different practices through the connections and reciprocity formed between the artists. 

Net//Work was a four-week residency that ran from 18 January - 14 February 2021 developed in partnership with British Council offering artists a period of reflection, research, practice, skills exchange and professional networking opportunities focused on digital artistic practices and technologies. 

The online residency honed points of connection between four very exciting practices. The sessions in the residency provided critical support in the form of mentoring, group conversations, problem solving surgeries, guest talks and reading groups. These sessions were used to test ideas, tease out solutions and suggest new possible directions for these artists' projects. 

Wysing worked with artists
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Uma Breakdown, Nikissi Serumaga and 
Leyya Mona Tawil with support from
David Blandy.

Digital Arts Studios joined with Golden Thread Gallery and Momentum Berlin to host Rita Adib, Mohamed Abdel Gawad, Tim Shaw and Maya Chowdhry. Artists took part in a programme of activities including peer-to-peer exchange, mentoring, group critiques and presentations.

British Council in partnership with Wysing Arts Centre and Digital Arts Studios

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley 
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley works predominantly in animation, sound, performance and video games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Their practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record the “History of Trans people both living and past,” their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future: “Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to share our experiences.” Danielle’s work has been shown in Science Gallery, Barbican, Tate, Les Urbains as well as being part of the BBZ Alternative Graduate Show at the Copeland Gallery. An online component of their work can often be found here. 

Uma Breakdown
Uma Breakdown is an artist/writer/researcher working around horror studies, feminist literature, and queer games. Last year they finished a PhD about The Evil Dead, care, trans* écriture féminine, disaster and play. Also in 2020 they presented a plant horror RPG (with Una Hamilton Helle, Eltons Kūns, and Erik Martinson) at Kim?, Riga; a video game about sleeping on the ground next to animals for FACT, Liverpool; and a short story about SSRIs and Artaud for Ma Bibliothèque. In 2021 they have undertaken residencies at Akademie Schloss Solitude and Wysing Arts, and are currently researching criminality as love/writing in the work of Genet and Cixous.  

Leyya Mona Tawil 
Leyya Mona Tawil [Lime Rickey International] is an artist working through dance, sound and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Her 24-year record of performance/installation scores that have been presented in cities throughout the US, Europe and the Arab world. Tawil was the 2020 ISSUE Project Room Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow for her NOMADIC SIGNALS program; and a 2018 Saari Residence Fellow (Finland). Tawil’s solo work - Lime Rickey International’s Future Faith - was nominated for a 2019 Bessie Award in Music. Tawil has received commissioning support from Abrons Arts Center (NYC), KONE Foundation (Helsinki), Pieter Performance Space (Los Angeles), Gibney DiP (NYC) and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation (Oakland). She is the director of Arab.AMP – a platform for experimental live art and music from the SWANA diaspora.