Inside the Worlds We Were Never Meant to Enter with Danielle Udogaranya

For nearly a decade, Danielle Udogaranya has been quietly reshaping the digital world's millions of people play inside. As the founder of EBONIX, her work sits at the intersection of gaming, culture, and technology, not as an add-on, but embedded directly into the code itself.

Her recent exhibition, Black Lines of Code, marked ten years of challenging who gets to be seen, styled, and centered in virtual spaces. Presented as a mixed-media experience, the exhibition explored identity, authorship, and what it means to build yourself into systems that were never designed with you in mind.

We spoke to Danielle about representation beyond visibility, the politics of pixels, and why digital worlds might be where some of the most important cultural rewriting is happening right now.

Black Lines of Code marked a decade of work, but looking back, do you feel more pride, relief, or unfinished business?

Truthfully, it’s a combination of all three. There’s pride in knowing I brought something into the world that moved people and stirred real feeling. Seeing artists and contributors finally centred, celebrated, and given space to be taken seriously was deeply affirming. It felt like proof that the work, and the patience behind it, mattered.

At the same time, there’s relief and a sense of momentum rather than closure. Pulling it off set a bar for what representation and inclusion in games and virtual worlds can look like when it’s done with intention. But it also made it clear that this isn’t an endpoint. It’s a marker in a much longer road, and there’s still work to be done. Work I’m excited to get started on.

You’ve spoken about authoring our own image in digital spaces. At what point did you realise representation wasn’t just about being seen, but about controlling the tools that define how you’re seen?

Very early on, I understood that visibility on its own wasn’t enough. It wasn’t just about adding more options or variety for the sake of it. The real issue was who had the power to decide what those options were in the first place, and why certain bodies, hair textures, and aesthetics were treated as exceptions rather than defaults.

As I started creating and sharing afrocentric hairstyles and clothing, I could see how deeply that control mattered. It shifted how both children and adults related to play, identity, and self-expression. When you can author your own image, you’re not just being included, you’re shaping the language of the space itself.

Games are often dismissed as escapism. After curating the exhibition, do you think virtual worlds can sometimes be more honest than the real one?

Absolutely. Virtual worlds can be brutally honest, sometimes unintentionally so. They show you exactly who was considered when the system was built and who wasn’t. In real life, exclusion can hide behind politeness, bureaucracy, or “that’s just how it is.” In games, it’s right there in the menus. If your hair type doesn’t exist, if your skin tone is an afterthought, if your culture only shows up as a trope, there’s no way to dress that up. 

At the same time, virtual spaces also show us who we want to be. People spend hours crafting avatars that feel closer to their inner truth than what they’re allowed to express offline. That honesty is powerful. It’s why games aren’t just escapism to me. They’re mirrors, prototypes, sometimes even rehearsal spaces for a world that treats us with more care and imagination than the one we log out into.

Your Afrocentric custom content for The Sims has been quietly revolutionary. Did you ever imagine something that started as community-driven creation would evolve into institutional recognition and an exhibition?

Not at all. At the time, I was just trying to solve a very personal frustration and sharing the results because I knew I wasn't the only one feeling it when the community responded to my first set of content.  There was no master plan for recognition, exhibitions, or institutions paying attention.

It was about care. About filling a gap that felt loud every time I opened the game.

What’s been surreal is watching something rooted in community need, slowly become something institutions couldn’t ignore anymore. But even then, the recognition feels secondary. The real win has always been seeing people feel seen, especially kids, parents, and players who’d never had that experience before. The exhibition felt like a full-circle moment, taking something that lived quietly on screens and timelines and placing it into a physical space where its cultural weight couldn’t be minimised or brushed aside

Algorithmic bias is often talked about in abstract terms. Through the exhibition, what did bias look like when it showed up in something as simple as a character creator or a hairstyle menu?

It looked small, but heavy. A limited slider. A single “curly” option doing the job of fifty. Sometimes behind a paywall. Hairstyles that are labelled as “urban” or “exotic,” if they existed at all. Skin tones that had 7 lighter options and 2 dark ones with an ashy undertone. These choices might seem minor, but they loudly tell you where you sit in the hierarchy of importance.

Through the exhibition, bias showed up as absence. The extra steps some players have to take just to feel normal in a space that’s meant to be playful. Downloading mods, layering workarounds, accepting near-enough as good enough. When you line those moments up, you start to see a pattern. Bias isn’t always loud or malicious. Sometimes it’s simply built into the default, and that’s what makes it so persistent and why Black Lines of Code and the work I do through EBONIX is essential in dismantling such frameworks.

You’ve collaborated with major brands like Samsung, Meta, Xbox, and The Sims. Looking back, how did you protect authenticity when working inside corporate systems that weren’t originally built with your values in mind?

By being very clear about what I would and wouldn’t compromise on and remaining true to the most authentic version of myself. I learned on this journey that authenticity isn’t something you sprinkle on at the end of a project. It has to be baked into the process, the conversations, and sometimes the uncomfortable feedback. If I felt like I was being brought in just to tick a box, I’d either push back or walk away.

I also stayed grounded in the fact that I wasn’t speaking just for myself. I was carrying years of community feedback, lived experience, and quiet labour that never made it into pitch decks. That gave me a backbone. Working within those systems meant learning their language without letting it dilute my own. The moment it stopped feeling aligned, it stopped being worth it. I learned that every opportunity didn’t need a yes. 

The exhibition blurred art, tech, and identity. Was that intentional resistance to categorisation, or does your work simply refuse to sit neatly in one lane?

A bit of both, honestly. I’ve never experienced my identity or my creativity in silos, so forcing the work into one category has always felt artificial. The blur reflects how these things actually show up in real life. Technology shapes identity. Art responds to systems. Games sit right in the middle of all of that.

I was also a quiet resistance to labelling it too neatly. Categorisation can be useful in some cases, but it can also limit how seriously work is taken, especially when it sits at the edges of culture and technology in this way. By letting the exhibition live in that in-between space, it invited people to engage with and appreciate it more openly, without deciding what it was supposed to be before they experienced it.

You curated Black Lines of Code as both an archive and a catalyst. What do you hope future creators take from seeing their culture preserved in this way?

I hope they understand that their work is worthy of preservation. Not just trending, not just timely, but archival. So much of our digital culture disappears or gets flattened over time, especially when it’s created by Black and marginalised communities. Seeing it treated with care, context, and intention matters.

I also hope it gives them permission to build boldly. To see that documenting where we’ve been doesn’t stop progress, it fuels it. The archive isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about evidence. Proof that we were here, that we shaped these spaces, and that future work doesn’t have to start from scratch or ask for validation before it exists.

You’ve judged major awards and spoken on global stages, yet your work remains deeply community-rooted. How do you stay accountable to the people you started building for?

I’ve never seen my community as an audience, it’s always been about the relationship I’ve built with them over the years. I’ve listened. I paid attention to what people are struggling with, what they’re excited by, what felt missing, and I let that shape my decisions even when it’s inconvenient.

Accountability also means remembering why I started. My “why” is  irrefutable. If a project looks impressive on paper but doesn’t serve the people it claims to represent, that’s a red flag for me. The community doesn’t need perfection, it needs honesty and follow-through. As long as I’m building with them rather than for them, that keeps me grounded.

When people walked into the exhibition knowing nothing about gaming, what did you hope they felt before they even understood what they were seeing?

I wanted them to feel welcomed. Curious, not intimidated. Even if they didn’t understand the mechanics or references straight away, I hoped they could feel the care in the space. The colours, the sound, the way the work was presented. All of that was intentional.

Before understanding comes emotion. If someone could walk in and feel warmth, pride, or even a quiet discomfort that made them pause, that mattered to me. Gaming can feel exclusionary from the outside. I wanted the exhibition to do the opposite, to invite people in and let them sense that these worlds hold real stories, real labour, and real cultural weight. And that even in these worlds, identity deserves to feel seen and be undeniable.

Representation is often framed as progress. Did the exhibition change how you think about celebrating firsts without questioning who still gets left out?

Yes, it really sharpened that tension for me. Firsts matter. They open doors, create visibility, and shift what feels possible. But they can also become stopping points if we’re not careful. Celebration without reflection can quietly reinforce the idea that the work is done when it’s really just begun.

The exhibition made me think more about proximity and access. Who gets invited into these spaces. Whose work is archived, funded, or legitimised, and whose still sits on the margins. Progress is about changing the systems themselves so fewer people are left waiting to be included. And I feel we did that amazingly well.

After seeing audience reactions, do you think cultural change is happening faster in digital spaces than in physical institutions?

In many ways, yes. Digital spaces move at the speed of people’s needs and imaginations. Communities can respond, remix, and build in real time without waiting for permission. That’s why so much cultural innovation happens there first. By the time institutions catch up, the conversation has often already moved on.

That said, physical institutions still hold power. They control funding, legitimacy, and long-term preservation. What I’m seeing now is a gap between where culture is being shaped and where it’s being formally recognised. The challenge, and the opportunity, is figuring out how to bridge that gap without slowing the work down or diluting its intent.

On a personal level, how did building EBONIX and curating this exhibition change your relationship with play, imagination, and rest?

It forced me to take all three more seriously. Play evolved from being something frivolous or secondary and became a legitimate way of thinking, processing, and creating. Imagination became less about escape and more about making the impossible possible. When you realise how deeply these worlds affect people, you start treating what you build with a different level of care.

Rest was, and still is, the hardest lesson. I often am confronted with how often I pushed through exhaustion because the work felt bigger than me. Curating the exhibition showed me that sustainability isn’t optional. If I want to keep building spaces that nurture others, I have to protect my own capacity too. That shift has changed how I think about pace, boundaries, and what it means to keep showing up long-term.

If Black Lines of Code was a love letter, who was it really written for, your younger self, your community, or the next generation?

All of them, but in different ways. It was for my younger self who knew the feeling of absence and erasure well, but didn’t know to want for better. It was for the community who kept showing up, contributing, and believing in the work long before it had a stage or a spotlight.

And it was very much for the next generation. For the kids who will grow up expecting better, who won’t see themselves as optional or niche in digital spaces. If the exhibition did its job, it leaves behind an undeniable message that says you belong here, and you always have and deserve to be.

At its core, Black Lines of Code was more than an exhibition. It was a reminder that culture doesn’t only live in galleries, classrooms, or archives. It lives in menus, avatars, textures, and design choices that quietly shape how people see themselves every day.

Through EBONIX, Danielle Udogaranya continues to prove that representation is not a trend or a feature. It is infrastructure. And when you change the code, you don’t just change the image on screen. You change who gets to imagine themselves inside the future.