Gordon Robichaux is pleased to present Dembe lya ba kuchu (queer peace), a solo exhibition of new ceramic sculptures and a batik painting by Leilah Babirye. This is the artist’s fourth show at the gallery following two exhibitions in New York (2018 and 2020) and a third presented by the gallery in Los Angeles (2022). The exhibition is concurrent with the artist’s inclusion in La Biennale di Venezia, where Babirye has installed five monumental outdoor sculptures, and her first institutional solo show in the US at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, which presents the artist’s work in dialogue with the museum’s collection of historical African art.

Babirye’s exhibition at Gordon Robichaux comprises a new batik fabric painting that the artist created in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and four recent figurative sculptures with ceramic heads—three tabletop busts installed on a large pedestal and one large floor-based work. The works exemplify the artist’s distinct material vocabulary: ceramics with layered, painterly glazes, adorned with found and altered objects such as industrial hardware; braids woven with bicycle tire inner tubes; and carved, waxed, burned, and burnished wood bases. The ceramic elements are bathed in variegated glazes that evince Babirye’s fearless approach; she does not use or record formulas for the colors and relies on intuition to discover unique results with each work.

Babirye titles the figures using given names from her native Lugandan language—Nantale (one who is loved), Dembe (peace), Kabiite (one who brings peace), Kalinda from the Kuchu Monkey Clan—a reverent embrace of her heritage and the western and central African traditions that inspire her work, as well as the queer—kuchu—African community. Each sculpture expands the artist’s ongoing project to create representations of the LGBT+ community, endowed with beauty, pride, dignity, and the right to live freely.