Students experience The Delusion at the Serpentine Galleries

Dr Gus Subero reflects on a recent class field trip to the Serpentine Galleries.

As part of the Year 2 Dynamics of Imagery in Arts and Design module, we recently visited the exhibition Danielle Brathwaite‑Shirley: The Delusion at the Serpentine Galleries. 

A group of 18 students accompanied me for the 90-minute session, in which we engaged with the gallery’s interactive digital installation, discussed how avatars and glitch aesthetics function as icons of identity and erasure, and recorded group reflections in the gallery café afterwards (one student even compared the avatar game to a runaway remote-control drone).

The Horizons/I-Explore Dynamics of Imagery in Arts and Design module explores the social, cultural and political dynamics of visual texts across arts and design, equipping students to decode iconography, visual composition and the ambiguous power of images in a globalised world. The visit directly enhanced the module’s learning by allowing students to apply concepts of iconography, metaphor and cultural dynamics in a live, immersive environment rather than simply on the page.

The gallery experience brought to life our theoretical discussions of how visual texts operate in conditions of exclusion, archive-making and empowerment, helping students to see how the “building blocks of composition” (line, colour, texture) are entangled with power, identity and memory. The interactive format particularly helped students reflect on their own positionality as viewers and how visual culture is rarely neutral.

In short, the trip turned the module’s abstract frameworks into textured, bodily experiences — and judging by the lively debrief, both students and I found it a memorable and meaningful outing.