The Brooklyn Rail

I first met Leilah Babirye through Instagram in 2018, which led to a studio visit that started an ongoing conversation. I was struck by her ability to transform trash into treasure, using found materials to reflect on the adversities she had faced and to envision a brighter future. Leilah had arrived in New York in 2015 through the Fire Island Artist Residency, after being publicly outed in Uganda, and was granted asylum the year we met. Our shared experiences of forced displacement—hers from Uganda, mine from Russia—created a point of connection as we discussed the challenges queer people face in their home countries. Some months later, in 2019, I included her work in a small group show I curated at the Assembly Room on the Lower East Side, a space that, sadly, closed at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Leilah was making new work for the exhibition, and I distinctly remember one night having beers together at the historic gay bar Julius’, and seeing someone drink from a can of Gay Beer. Leilah instantly decided that it should be part of the assemblage she was making for the show, and we sourced a number of discarded Gay Beer cans that night. Leilah’s curious mind and taste for discovery are reflected in her constant search for discarded objects, to which she gives new meaning. Her impressive body of work reveals her resilience and truly manifests artistic practice as a way to not only survive, but thrive.

Ksenia M. Soboleva (Rail): You and I have been in conversation on multiple occasions, and every time we speak, there’s so much to catch up on. Just in the past few months, you’ve had an exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park; you’re included in the Venice Biennale, which I was very happy to see this summer; your exhibition We Have a History at the de Young Museum opened in June, and now you have a solo show up at Gordon Robichaux. There have been so many developments in your practice, and each conversation reveals new insights into your work. When you reflect on the last nine years, what are the things that stand out in terms of how your work has evolved?

Leilah Babirye: Thank you very much, Ksenia. I’m always happy to see you and, just like you mentioned, it’s not the first time we’re having a conversation. We know each other, we’ve seen each other grow since 2018, it’s been a long time. That question is pretty wide. So much has happened between 2015 to 2024. It’s taken a long, long time from when I arrived in this country to start making serious art. It’s a journey of maturity and growth. So it’s a very broad question. So where should I start, Professor?

Rail: Maybe let’s start in the present, with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park show. What was it like to make an exhibition for a sculpture park, and were there any realizations that you had about the development of your practice?

Babirye: The entire show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park was inspired by the environment. I normally work with the surroundings, I like to observe my surroundings and see, where do I start? I went to the Yorkshire, just with my bags, and I went out to source wood the next day. I had a team of ten people working with me. And that’s why I titled the show Unity, or Obumu in Luganda, to highlight the collaboration with the people around me. It was teamwork. I worked with technical teams that came from the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and they knew where to get everything, which was key to me, and I got to learn other skills like welding. I don’t usually weld, but I had no choice. When I got to Yorkshire, for the first time I couldn’t use my chainsaw, because I needed a license for it. So I had a whole technical team organized by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and this support network speaks to how my practice has grown—both metaphorically and literally.

Rail: I remember doing that very first studio visit with you in Bushwick. You were in a tiny basement space, making much smaller works. And I remember you saying how you would love to work on a larger scale, but didn’t have the space to do so. And then the most recent conversation we had was for BOMB magazine, when your Public Art Fund project was up in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and your sculptures became part of the New York skyline, your work literally reaching for the sky. And you said, these are still babies. I can go much larger. Taking up space as a queer person, as a Black person, it’s an act of resistance. What would it mean to make a sculpture that doesn’t even fit into a museum, or a sculpture that will smash the museum windows or ceiling? But I’m wondering, also thinking about your watercolors and those smaller sculptures I first saw, how do you envision this relationship between, on the one hand, the monumental scale of your work, and at the same time, the very personal and intimate dimension of your practice? What does scale mean to you today?

Babirye: When I started, I didn’t have enough space to blow my work up in scale, even though I knew I wanted to. I wanted to do bigger works, but because of the circumstances, the situation, I couldn’t. How was I going to move them around? Where was I going to store them? But once I had a team and space to support it, I kept going larger. Now I can afford blowing it up, to take it from place to place. There’s one ceramic piece in the show at the de Young Museum that’s eight feet tall. I did it on purpose, I really wanted to push the limits of the kiln, which is eight feet. I like a challenge. But then I have to sit down and say, “Leilah, you can’t do this to other people.” I enjoy it. I love doing huge works. I like giving people trouble, but sometimes the trouble becomes too much. This piece can’t be shipped all over the place. It’s owned now by the Hammer Museum, but it’s very fragile and delicate. I told my gallerist Jacob Robichaux of Gordon Robichaux that I really want to do another one of those, and he was like: “Leilah, please don’t for now.” [Laughter]

So, like you’re saying, the presence of the work and the fact that my work also represents queerness is important; the feeling of seeing a huge queer sculpture that says “I’m here.” That definitely informs my thinking about sizes. But for now, I’m not so sure how much larger I’ll go. I would love to, but it gets complicated. Mostly because it gets challenging to move the works all over the place. But I still work in all sizes. I have two-inch works, to nine-feet works.

Rail: I was so excited to see that Natasha Becker was curating an exhibition of your work at the de Young Museum. Natasha was one of the founders and director of Assembly Room when I included your work in the small show I curated there in 2019, titled Plays on Camp. Who knew when you all met in that tiny space on Henry Street that five years later Natasha would curate a large-scale museum exhibition of your work? It’s truly wonderful. What was it like to work on We Have a History with Natasha?

Babirye: Working with Natasha is like talking to you. I’ve known Natasha since 2018, and she didn’t give up following my work since. When she reached out to my gallery, they said, this is a beautiful opportunity, let’s take it on. Natasha, not unlike other curators, gets close to the artist. So even before I knew she was coming up with a show, we had already had a strong connection. We just went to see art and talk about art. When she brought up this show, I really felt so open to it. We Have a History wasn’t the original title; it changed overnight. I have phrases that I often repeat, such as “being Ugandan is not easy,” or “being African is not easy.” “We have a history” is another one. Natasha noticed it and one night she texted me and said “Why don’t we change it? Why don’t we call it We Have a History?” which felt right to me. I had gone to the de Young Museum, did a tour, and looked at their collection. They sent me images. I have catalogues, and looking through all these works, very important and historical works, I selected a few that resonated. And at that time, we were having the Yorkshire Sculpture Park show, we were having the Venice Biennale, and now here I am prepping for the de Young museum show. So as a team, we decided: why not borrow works that are in collections around the West Coast? So almost all the work in the show is on loan from private collectors and museum collections. I did three new pieces for the entire show. And I’m very grateful to all the people who loaned their works to us, because I know how dearly people love these works, as I did. I had a funny interaction with a collector that attended the opening. I kept on saying, “Oh, thank you for allowing us to borrow my baby.” And he said: “Leilah, that is not your baby. I lent you my baby.” Today, that still buzzes. I’m like, Oh, these babies are no longer mine. It was a beautiful statement to hear from a collector.

Walking into the de Young Museum, I feel the historical works. A few times I went through the museum by myself, just to look at their collection and get a sense of it, and I couldn’t imagine where those sculptors were at that time, making those works. I couldn’t think of what tools they were using. I have so many questions that are still unanswered in my mind. Maybe one hundred years from now, these are the same questions people seeing works of mine will have. So I asked myself: how are these works going to relate to each other? When I used to sit with my grandfather, the stories he and my grandmother were telling me were always connected. I’m imagining when my work sits with its ancestors, they are having a conversation. So it’s a very important show to me. For the first time, I feel that I’m still seated in the show, even when I’m not there, because I have a lot of questions about all those artifacts that are in that collection. And there will be more.

Rail: Yes, your work engages with tradition and shows that queerness has always been part of African history. Your cultural background continues to influence your artistic practice, but now that you’re engaging with audiences all over the world, do you find that people’s responses to your work are different depending on the different cultural contexts of the country that you’re exhibiting in?

Babirye: Not really, because my work basically represents queer people who are everywhere. I use found material that I pick up everywhere. Wherever I am, I can get found material. The same goes for queer people; we are everywhere. The Venice Biennale is titled Foreigners Everywhere. It’s just like queer people everywhere. There is no way you can separate us anywhere. When I got to Venice I asked: “Do you have a trash place or a garbage place where I can go and pick some stuff? I need some tires. I need this, I need that.” I got everything I needed from found material, from trash, which is everywhere just like queer people. So that means my work is connected, no matter where it is. Homophobia is also everywhere; wherever I go, all over the world, there will be homophobic people, and to me they are the same people. Homophobes are everywhere, queer people are everywhere, trash is everywhere. I always thought maybe it’s only in Africa where the government is against LGBTQ people. But then I started realizing, like when you and I had our first conversation: “Oh, there’s homophobia in other countries, like in Russia, and even all over Europe!” We grew up treasuring Europe, North America, all these other continents that are not in Africa. We thought countries outside of Africa were like a bed of roses, but when you’re in there, you realize, oh, even in New York, there are homophobic people. These are new things that I had to learn, and I’m trying to address in my work a little bit.

Rail: One of the reasons I was so intrigued by your work back in 2018 is because I could see this parallel you were creating between trash and queer people, the ways in which queer people are treated like trash, are considered as something that is discardable. And here you are picking up this trash and turning it into beautiful objects. One of the developments I’ve noted in your practice is that you went from working by yourself and getting stuff literally off the street, to now having a team, and sourcing your materials more intentionally: you go to scrap yards or recycling facilities, and you buy the materials. How would you say that has changed the work? I imagine that when you’re working with discarded items from the street, you don’t know what you’re going to find, so there’s this element of unpredictability; every object has its own story. Whereas now you’re more intentionally seeking things out. Would you say that there’s room for serendipity?

Babirye: While it may feel organized now that I’m working with a team, it’s actually not. I still use my found material, which is inherently unpredictable. Most of the time I just walk into these places and take it all in; I enjoy going to the dump and seeing all these metals. I don’t go with a planned purpose, I just genuinely enjoy it. I don’t have intentions with what I choose; it’s unexpected. You don’t know what you’re going to find there. Even when you go there today and see, let’s say, copper metal, metal sheets, or this or that. When you go back tomorrow, it’s not there. Even when you go back in two hours, it may not be there. It’s very hard to plan what you’re going to find. Mostly, I go there to have a great time. And I do still find my material from the streets as well, and some of my studio assistants come with stuff. Sometimes it’s good, and other times I’ll be like, “I don’t think I’ll need that.” It takes a lot of time to organize the trash, to consider the beauty of how something will look. I’m paying tribute to women, trans women, and also trans men, who want to look good in public. I don’t want them to look like they just had a bad night walking out on the streets in the morning. So it takes a lot of time and care.

Rail: So looking at these images of your work in Venice, you know more and more you are exhibiting work outdoors. And, well, first of all, I’d love to hear about your experience with the Venice Biennale in general, but also exhibiting the work outdoors, you’re really surrendering it to the elements. What’s that like? How does that feel? Are you ever worried about what’s going to happen? Are you ever surprised in how certain materials react, you know, after a storm or heat or whatever?

Babirye: I always take that into consideration. The fact is that I’m creating human beings. That’s how I always take my work to be. I feel that they are people, they are among us, they’re humans. So I embrace everything: the aging, the changing, the evolving. I’m not a person who’s worried about a crack. If a ceramic piece comes out of the kiln and it’s all broken, I tell people: “The baby didn’t want to grow up, the baby died.” Or if it’s all cracked, I say: “The baby wanted to have a crack, just like anybody has a scar.” I embrace my works. It tends to frighten people who own this work to sometimes see a crack in the wood, for example, but this wood is growing. It’s still breathing. I have to explain this to collectors. These works in Venice have been out for almost six months. They’re human beings. Something is going to happen—just imagine if you’re outside for a week. I was away for two months. When I came back, I was extremely tired, which I embraced. I was in bed for two weeks. Anything that happens, I embrace, as long as it’s not somebody cutting them in half. I don’t try to control it. I’m like, “Baby, it’s okay. You’re cracking. It’s okay. You’re growing.” That’s how I embrace it. It’s skin, it enlarges. Regarding the work at the Venice Biennale, the reaction was insane, in a good way. I’ve never seen so many people tagging me on posts in a day, like two hundred people a day. We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from the show, which is very exciting. And I thank Adriano Pedrosa for thinking about my work in the first place, and the entire team I worked with. There is no way I could do it myself. There are many things that I can’t do myself, even when I want to work alone. I can’t lift an entire piece by myself. Or I used to have time to braid every single braid on the sculptures, but now I work with an entire team from African Services, a human rights agency which helps people migrating from the African diaspora to New York. I never forget where I came from, and I hire the people who are in the place that I was five years ago, six years ago, and then they come in and they just braid, just hammer stuff around, all those little things that, you know, it’s not hard work, but it will take a lot of my time, and they do it.

Rail: And would you say that now that the work is exhibited outdoors more and more, does it invite more interaction? Because, you know, if you see this inside a museum, you’re likely not to touch it, but when it’s outdoors… so, you know, I touched all of these. [Laughs] I hope that’s okay.

Babirye: It is very okay!

Rail: And I remember the Public Art Fund sculptures, children were climbing on them. Remember, I think you were telling me. So how do you feel about this increased interaction, physical interaction, with the work?

Babirye: As long as it’s not endangering a person, as long as somebody’s not pushing it to fall on them, as long as they are just touching and embracing it. Talking about the Brooklyn Bridge, I enjoyed it because it’s just across the street, and I would go there and not even tell anybody that I’m the artist. I remember there was a person who brought small sculptures or artifacts and placed them on my sculptures. It looked like this person was praying or doing some sort of ritual with them. I remember visitors would braid the hair of the sculptures together. I’d see all kinds of things, and I enjoyed seeing the interaction. At the Venice Biennale, somebody came and unbraided one of the pieces, and it’s okay. I like when people want to find out what is going on. What material is this? When people touch, it means they’re interested. It means they want to know it. They’re curious. That’s why they are getting close and they want to touch. As long as it’s coming from a place of appreciation and curiosity, it’s very okay with me.

Rail: And in terms of the making of the work, it also demands so much physically from you. You use chainsaws, you do wood burning, you weave rubber, metal. And I’m curious, how does that very physical process influence the form, and how much room for unpredictability is there in that? Let’s say, you have a piece of wood and you’re going to burn it. Do you have a very specific idea of the way that you want it to look, or do you sort of go with the flow of the process and are open to a multitude of results?

Babirye: I always just dive in. I don’t make sketches. Whatever is in my head is what comes out. Even if I sketch, things will come out a different way. When I dive in, I just embrace that. So, let’s say I’ve just cut a face into a piece of wood. That’s when the thinking part begins. How is this baby going to look? How is she going to dress up? That is actually the longest process of my artmaking. It can take weeks to figure out what to add, what to take off. It takes forever. But once I figure it out and feel it, it comes out naturally. I’ll often be in my studio, all by myself, just to look, just to feel. I put myself in that piece and see, how do I feel? You find me doing the poses, doing all those little things. I’m like, how about if the hair flows down? And I continue thinking about it even when I’m not in the studio; when I’m on the train, when I’m at the station. I’m thinking about the work that I left in the studio. How is she going to look? So that’s the longest time, and it’s a very unpredictable time. But I always talk to my work.

Rail: And the work talks to you.

Babirye: You feel it. You feel when she says no, or when she says this is fine.

Rail: So with your upcoming show at Gordon Robichaux, what has the work been telling you lately?

Babirye: My work has changed a lot. When you look at my earlier works, even way back home in Uganda, they are about pain, they are about creating metaphors of things that I thought could be educative, in a way, to my people: how to understand the anti-homosexuality bill. It was basically about pain. We’ve been in too much pain as gay people. We’ve been arrested too much. We’re crying. But at the end of the day, I’m like: When are we going to stop lamenting? When are we going to stop crying? How can we fight back and say we’re done? So my work has come from pain to adjusting it to things that I feel like, “Okay, this is us. We are beautiful. We are good.” Just giving my works beautiful names is reclaiming our history. I also use people that are famous and put their names in our position, and see how they feel. I have a piece that I did a few years ago, called Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga. I actually named it that, Kadaga Rebecca, because I want Kadaga, the Member of Parliament, to know how it feels to be attacked. Much of it is also about creating our own families; all the works from Yorkshire were named after different clans and tribes from different queer people in Uganda. And then the works that are in Venice, I represented the entire country, the different regions. My focus has always been on where I come from, in central Uganda, but I decided to honor all other queer people in the five regions of the country. Every piece represents a queer person in those other districts of Uganda. And then when you look at the de Young Museum, I just picked from the different cultures that I come from. And then for the works in the show at Gordon Robichaux, I chose random names that are given to children in Uganda, like Peace. Parents will name their child Peace because they feel like this child might be peaceful. So why not give them to us? Why not have a queer Peace?

Rail: You are such an important voice for the queer community in Uganda. Are there any stories that you can share about how your work has impacted queer people in your country?

Babirye: The impact cannot be felt so much right now. Art is not valued in Uganda the way it is here. The impact of my work, the impact of Babirye Leilah, I’m going to say, in the African continent right now, it can’t be felt. But at least as a person, what I’ve done, all my queer friends, activists, people that I know, all of them have works named after them. So, many years from now when people start recognizing my importance in Africa or in Uganda, they’ll be like, oh, there’s this name. Oh, that was a queer person. Oh, we remember that person. Oh, we’ve heard of that person. So that is the impact, that is what I’ve done.

Rail: What are you most excited about looking forward? Are you going to take a break after this busy year?

Babirye: I was away for six weeks after the de Young show! I went down to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and then Dubai with my young brother. Every year, I make sure I get somebody who’s never been on a plane in my family, and I put them on a plane. So I traveled with my brother and my nephew throughout those countries. I took a break, now I’m back in action. What else do you do when you’re in New York? You are either in your apartment or in the studio. I’m looking forward to the book signing at Gordon Robichaux. The book was printed in 2021, but we never did a signing. I’m looking forward to meeting people and seeing them interact with these new babies at Gordon Robichaux. I haven’t seen them in a few months and I’m looking forward to seeing how they look right now in the space. And to go back to scale, I’d be excited if something came up where I had to make a 20 foot tall sculpture.

Rail: Have you ever suspended anything from the ceiling? I don’t think I’ve seen you do that yet.

Babirye: No, that is a good one! I’ve never tried that. It’s something that I’ve taken from the conversation today.

Rail: Thank you Leilah, I can’t wait to hear about it during our next conversation.