122 culturedmag.com
TAKING
OFF
THE
MASK
BY SVETLANA KITTO PORTRAIT BY MARK HARTMAN PRODUCED BY MICHAEL REYNOLDS
I meet up with sculptor
Leilah Babirye
at the diner La Bonbonniere in the West Village
on a sweltering Monday afternoon. Before we
even sit down at our proudly unglamorous
Formica table, Babirye is telling me a story. Her
brother is threatening to disinvite her friends
from his upcoming wedding in Uganda, where
she is from and was forced to flee in 2015 after
being publicly outed as a lesbian. "My friends
there are all activists and openly gay," she
explains. "But he said, 'I invited pastors, elders
and people from the church—your friends will
come with their locks, women dressed like men,
men dressed like women.'" She smiles to
herself as if to say: His loss—it won't be a party
without them.
Since finding a home in the queer scene of
Kampala, Uganda, Babirye has insisted on
bringing her community with her everywhere she
goes, and most especially into her work as a
sculptor. For her first solo exhibition this past
spring at Gordon Robichaux, Babirye made
activist material out of her utopic, celebratory
vision of queer life. The show, "Amatwaale Ga
Ssekabaka Mwanga II (The Empire of King
Mwanga II)," paid homage to the little-known,
openly bisexual King Mwanga II who, in the late
19th century, fought against the colonial rule of
Uganda by Western missionaries. Colonization
would eventually poison the people against long-
