Interview by Ismail Einashe
Portrait by Jonty Wilde 

Leilah Babirye is a Ugandan artist and activist based in Brooklyn, New York City, known for her large-scale ceramics and wooden sculptures, through which she explores the diversity of LGBTQIA+ identities in Uganda and beyond. Ismail Einashe talked to Babirye on the occasion of her first solo museum exhibition, “Obumu (Unity)”, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), just south of Leeds. Babirye spent the summer of 2023 in residency there, and her exhibition features seven anthropomorphic wooden sculptures carved out of a 200-year-old fallen beech tree from the park, alongside five large ceramic portrait sculptures, celebrating community in all its forms. Her work speaks to the resilience and beauty of her community, offering authentic, humanising depictions of its constituents, building to a body of work that embodies hope and resilience, and sends a resounding message to African leaders that LGBTQ+ individuals cannot be ignored.

Ismail Einashe What’s the inspiration for the title of your first solo museum exhibition, “Obumu (Unity)”?

Leilah Babirye I work according to my environment, and what inspired me here was the team I worked with. I’m a person who likes being around people and creating my own community. The second inspiration was wood: there is a ton of wood at YSP. On my site visit on my first day there, just looking at all that wood pushed me to work. The title came from the unity that we had as a team. I’m also looking at what’s going on in the world. What can we do as LGBTQ+ people to be together? If we don’t have unity, we can’t do anything. I know the power and the strength of a team. Obumu comes from omu, which is one, and obumu is many. Obumu is a Luganda word from Buganda, in central Uganda, where I was born and raised.

IE During your residency at YSP, you created a series of large wood and ceramic sculptures. Can you explain the process of making these works?

LB I was told I couldn’t carve them myself because I needed a license to use a chainsaw, so for the first time, I allowed somebody else to touch my work. But I’m learning from elders like Yinka Shonibare. We talked once, and I asked, “How do you do all these crazy things by yourself?” He said, “Leilah, you need a team. You need to work with other people and let them help you.” When I remembered that, I was like, you know what? I’ll let it go. I normally draw from my head, but this time I had to draw whatever I wanted them to carve. I worked with Nobi, a very good technician at YSP. He was carving using a chainsaw, but he hadn’t used it for ten years. I drew on the wood and told them what to take out. We had Connor, who rides his bicycle around the area, so he knew where to get scraps from local bike stores. We would carve, and then we would do the sanding and the burnishing, for which we used a blowtorch. We blowtorched it black; it’s not painted black. Then we started sanding it again, adding wax, and did the same thing over and over. I would look at the beautiful faces and see what to add and what to remove. Yorkshire has very good metalwork, and I used this opportunity to learn how to weld, which I didn’t have as a skill. I then joined both skills together, carving and welding.

IE Your work incorporates recycled materials, giving them new visual meaning. What drew you to work in this way?

LB I use these materials because I represent the gay community in Uganda. I started using rubbish to make it look beautiful, to give life to what people call rubbish. In Venice, I was talking in an interview about the theme of this year’s Biennale, “Foreigners Everywhere”. I had to work on some pieces when I got on site, and I asked the team where I could find the dumpster – all I needed was some trash to figure out what to do. And one of the interviewers was like, “Oh, trash everywhere, foreigners everywhere.” Which makes sense. Gay people everywhere.

IE Some of the pieces from your show at YSP are also being displayed in Venice. Could you share more about this?

LB We have two pieces in Venice that we made at YSP, two wooden works. The other three pieces come from my studio in New York. Venice gives you a big platform, and I decided to give honour to all the gay people in the entire country of Uganda. My everyday work is about Buganda, but there are five other regions in the country. We have the North, East, South, West and Central. My friends who follow me online were like, “Leilah, does it mean that in other regions, there are no gay people? Why don’t you ever create work about us?” So, I made these five pieces, and each piece represents a queer person from a different region of the country. I also made sure to use names that people were familiar with. Like I always do with my work, I don’t have any gender, I just come up and give them any name. It can be a princess that people are familiar with: one of the works from the East is about a queen who has just got married, and when you look at it, she has a beard. And then there is our princess from Buganda, who also has a beard in my work.

IE How has your personal experience as an LGBTQ+ activist from Uganda, where you were appallingly outed and forced from your home, influenced your approach to art?

LB I once walked into Afriart, now a big gallery in Uganda, went up to the owner and said, “I want to start working with you.” He loves and respects my work, but because of the restrictions of the government against LGBTQ+ people, he couldn’t take me in. He wouldn’t even show my work. He would ask me not to give my desired titles to my works. He would say, “Leilah, please.” I always had two titles for my works. When people came in and were homophobic, I would switch the language, and then when I saw people who were welcoming, I would talk about my work honestly.

IE How do you balance being an artist and an activist, and have you encountered any challenges in merging art and activism?

LB I look at my work as pieces that are always protesting and throwing it out there. We are gay, and we need to be treated right. It’s hard to differentiate myself and my art from my activism. I’m a full-time activist, full-time in my art. There is no way I can separate them. I spoke with Bobi Wine ten years ago, trying to help him figure out how to lift the ban he got when he sang a song about the LGBTQ+ community.

IE As a journalist partly based in Nairobi, I’ve closely followed the LGBTQ+ situation in East Africa. I was wondering what you make of Uganda’s influence on neighbouring countries’ LGBTQ+ policies, such as proposed laws in Kenya targeting LGBTQ+ people.

LB I was in Nairobi last year and then headed to Mombasa. I was there for a month, and I didn’t go back home. You know how you can sneak through on the bus into Uganda? I didn’t do it because most of the people I would have gone to see are already in the diaspora. Most of the activists are out of that country and seeking asylum. I’ve been to Kakuma refugee camp [a camp in north-eastern Kenya that currently hosts many Ugandan LGBTQ+ refugees], and I know most of the community organisers in Nairobi because most of them are trans women. It is so saddening that other countries are picking up anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Social media and politicians are creating homophobia in these communities. But in Nairobi, I don’t see that succeeding because of the political situation. You’ve had presidents change in Kenya over the years. In Uganda, we’ve not had a presidential change for over 40 years. Our president is stuck to power. He gets people’s sympathy by bringing up the Anti-Homosexuality Bill all the time when he wants to be voted in. But it is so sad because we’ve always called Nairobi home. All the people that I knew when they passed the 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill had to flee to Nairobi. In 2013, everybody I knew had to come to Nairobi when it came back to parliament. It has been our safe home with its clubs, you know, so it is sad.

IE In what ways has your journey as an artist helped you heal personally and within your community? How do you envision your art contributing to positive change or unity?

LB At the beginning, I was creating things out of pain, out of our experiences, finding trans women attacked on the streets and beaten up. When I first started creating art, I used to throw in the frustration of not being able to show my art anywhere in any gallery in Uganda. There was a shift when I moved to America, where I was free to do anything. I transformed from creating my art and selling it on social media for $50 to a whole team that I work with. I’ve shifted from living with six flatmates to now having no flatmates. I’ve embraced the different stories that I’ve passed through, from having no studio and working in a friend’s backyard, to having a small studio in a basement, and to having three studios now. All those movements and shifts show up in my work. Why not create from happiness? I can support my own community in places like Kakuma. I can now give freely. I call it a blessing. I feel like it’s high time now to embrace happiness for us..

Leilah Babirye, “Nakambugu from the Kuchu Njovu (Elephant) Clan”, 2023. Installation view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery. Photo © Jonty Wilde