‘Being an artist is also about taking risks. Whether I’m working with wood or ceramics, I often don’t know how a piece is going to turn out, especially when it comes to working on a large scale and splashing on glazes. Even coming here from Uganda and deciding to stay was a risk – and I embraced it.’
L. Babirye, ‘Artist Leilah Babirye: “I want to help people feel a sense of belonging”’, in Art Basel, March 2024
‘I always say that if you ever forget your history, then you won’t know who you are or where you’re going. There’s no way that I can be in the present or look to the future without also looking back, and that back and forth shows up in my work.’
L. Babirye, ‘Artist Leilah Babirye: “I want to help people feel a sense of belonging”’, in Art Basel, March 2024
‘I read a lot of Luganda books by professors back home, because much of my work is based on historical case studies from Buganda and I don’t like to misspell things, so I read literature by professors back home. Most people of my generation or younger, and even some people my parents’ age, don’t know much about this history. I want to make sure that the information I’m giving people is correct, so I read about it very carefully. I’m especially interested in Buganda’s clans – their history and origins.’
L. Babirye, ‘In the studio with… Leilah Babirye’, in Apollo Magazine, 19 March 2024
‘The Hudson River was one of the routes for the slave trade, and when I look at the skyline over Brooklyn Bridge Park from the vantage point of the sculptures, I am reminded of this. But I didn’t want to fixate on the dark parts of this narrative. Instead, I wanted to find a positive angle. That’s why I decided to make a sculpture that spoke to the experience of slaves liberating themselves, by uniting and working together as a group.’
L. Babirye in conversation with K. M. Soboleva, ‘Sculptures that reach for the skies’, in Bomb Magazine, 31 October 2022
‘In her Kuchu Ndagamuntu (Queer Identity Card) paintings, Babirye communicates a straightforward realism by depicting her subjects as ambiguously gendered, lipstick-wearing, bearded queens. Through bright and viscous applications of acrylic, the artist inscribes queer lineages into the ancestral lines of the Bugandan people […].’
L. O’Nell-Butler, ‘The World in Common’, in Leilah Babirye, exh. cat., New York / London: Gordon Robichaux and Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2021
‘There’s no mask-making or decorative wood-carving techniques unique to Central Africa; to learn the basics, Babirye sought out a local group of artisans that were producing masks in the West African tradition. Since the skills were borrowed and new to her, she had to get creative with the form and materials, a transcultural alchemy that helped her develop her own style and point of view, and a body of work reflective of the diversity of African art traditions.’
S. Kitto, ‘Artist Leilah Babirye Takes Off the Mask’, in Cultured Mag, 1 October 2018
‘An expert with a chisel, Babirye aspires to make sculptures from the wood of the jacaranda tree, as she says it’s the best to carve with, but her sculptures are mainly made from pine bought from New York lumber yards, usually used in building construction.’
A. Needham, ‘Sculptor Leilah Babirye: “In Uganda you can be jailed for talking about gay issues”’, in The Guardian, 9 November 2021
‘Composed of materials ranging from burnished wood to glazed ceramics, Babirye’s sensual sculptures and masks also poetically incorporate an array of found materials and objects – an intentional gesture that references the pejorative for a gay person in Luganda, “ebisiyaga” which means sugarcane husk. “It’s rubbish,” explains Babirye, “The part of the sugarcane you throw out.”
Babirye’s dignified figures don ornate headdresses crafted from industrial wiring and the tops of aluminium cans. Intricate braids are fashioned from rubber bicycle tire inner tubes, while delicate bead-like adornments on closer inspection are actually bicycle chains.’
P-R. Keh, ‘Leilah Babirye turns found objects into triumphant celebrations of queer identity’, in Wallpaper Magazine, October 2020
‘When I work in ceramics, it actually really calms me down. Ceramics is the only place where I feel like the medium tells you when to stop; clay tells you when to stop because you can’t exceed it. At a certain point when you add another inch, it collapses.’
L. Babirye in conversation with K. M. Soboleva, ‘Sculptures that reach for the skies’, in Bomb Magazine, 31 October 2022
‘I don’t want to speak for my work. I want people to feel like it’s speaking to them in their own way. It’s also interesting, because I try to keep my eyes open when I’m carving, but I end up closing them. In the end, I don’t really know what happens or how it gets done. I just find that all the eyes look like that.’
L. Babirye in conversation with N. Brara, ‘Artist Leilah Babirye on Sculpting Enigmatic Faces, and Her First Commission for Celine’, in Artnet, 11 November 2021
‘My work came from a place of pain and has now turned into love. I feel that I have grown a lot over the past few years, done a lot of self-care and healing. I am much happier compared to when I first started making my work, when it was a real mode of survival. Now I truly enjoy my present, and the process of enjoying my present is healing my past.’
L. Babirye in conversation with K. M. Soboleva, ‘Sculptures that reach for the skies’, in Bomb Magazine, 31 October 2022
All works: © Leilah Babirye, courtesy of Gordon Robichaux New York and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York
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