Leilah Babirye

Leilah Babirye is a Ugandan artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Outed in her native country as a lesbian and underground LGBTQ+ activist, Babirye's work is of large-scale ceramics, wooden sculptures, African masks, as well as drawings and paintings on paper. Babirye has had exhibitions at the Gordon Robichaux Gallery and the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, as well as the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London. She has also produced work for Heidi Slimane for Celine's Art Project.

Biography

Babirye was born and raised in Kampala, where she attended Makerere University from 2007 to 2010 where she studied art. Babirye is a lesbian. Her sexual orientation caused her to face discrimination and public humiliation as it is considered illegal to be openly homosexual in Uganda. Gordon was interested in Babirye's work and wanted to exhibit her art at his gallery, however, Babirye had only been drawing and painting so Gordon gave her his backyard as a space for her to work.

Major works

Gallery

Najunga From the Kuchu Ngaali (Crested Crane) Clan, 2021

Babirye utilizes wood, ceramic, metal and found materials and often represents African masks, influenced by her culture and sexuality. Named after a Ugandan clan, Babirye evokes the history of her culture through the clan names given to the people of Uganda. While being the first deadline piece Babirye has worked on, her process changed very little, still composing meaning and form as she went. Although, ultimately, her work is open to interpretation and communication, specifically through the emotion of the faces and masks Babirye creates. The ceramic face is erected from tubes of a bicycle tire, hardware, and glazing, as a commentary on the name given to a gay person in Luganda, ‘ebisiyaga’, meaning rubbish. Babirye often works with found materials, demonstrating that something believed to be waste, still has a use and is valuable.

Abambowa (Royal Guard Who Protects the King), 2021

Babirye's ceramic series of twenty-two heads exemplifies the King's Royal Guard. The figures are splattered or dripped with ceramic glazes, playing with techniques of the medium and aiming to ultimately imagine a new society, and encourage the evaluation of traditional values and systems of British Colonialism in Uganda. The roughly formed unique figures once again integrates Babirye's cultural heritage and sexuality into her work with the intent of referencing the figures as both members of the royal guard, as well as her queer community.

Nakawaddwa from the Kuchu Ngabi (Antelope) Clan, 2021

Another example of Babirye's interest in the amalgamation of her heritage and sexuality as a form of LGBTQIA activism is apparent in Nakawaddwa from the Kuchu Ngabi (Antelope) Clan. Babirye herself comes from the Antelope Clan of Uganda, and this ceramic head with an elaborate crown demonstrates the pride of Babirye and Ugandan people.

Found Material and LGBTQIA+ Reclamation

Babirye's use of found or “trash” materials within her artwork is symbolic of how the LGBTQIA+ community is viewed in Uganda, “Reusing materials is important to me, as a person who comes from a background where the LGBTQ community is looked at as trash still today”. Born and raised in Uganda, her culture has influence in the representation of King Mwanga's kingdom through wood and ceramic masks, in homage to the openly bisexual King.

Babirye's next prominent exhibition was back at Gordon Robichaux Gallery in 2020. She exhibited Ebika Bya ba Kuchu mu Buganda (Kuchu Clans of Buganda), her second solo exhibition at the gallery, which featured her sculpted faces made of ceramics, wood, metal, and found objects, to take place of and represent transgender women, and an overall queer community. In Babirye's work, she explores the potential of found objects, or materials considered garbage, to reflect on the term ‘ebisiyaga’ which refers to the gay people of Uganda, another word for rubbish. in the United States at San Francisco's De Young Museum.