Uploaded June 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Step inside Leilah Babirye’s studio, and see how she fearlessly transforms wood, ceramic, and found materials into ambitious sculptures that reflect her LGBTQ+ community. Born in Kampala, Uganda, and based in Brooklyn, New York, contemporary artist Leilah Babirye is known for her highly expressive, ambiguously gendered sculptures. Featuring interviews with the artist and Curator of African Art Natasha Becker, this short documentary explores Leilah Babirye’s artistic process, connections to art from west and central Africa, and new work for Leilah Babirye: We Have a History.
The film, directed by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s Khamisi Norwood, is part of our original documentary series FAMSF Presents.
Learn more about the exhibition: famsf.org/exhibitions/leilah-babirye
Subscribe to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: youtube.com/@FAMSF?sub_confirmation=1
About the Exhibition
Born in Kampala, Uganda, and based in New York, Leilah Babirye is known for her highly expressive, ambiguously gendered sculptures in ceramic, wood, and discarded objects. Reclaiming ceramic and wood-carving traditions from western and central Africa, she hand builds her ceramics, firing them with expressive glazes, while she whittles, scorches, and burnishes her wood sculptures. As a final touch, she adorns them with wire, bicycle chains, inner tubes, and other found metals and materials. The sculptures, which range in scale from towering totemic forms to busts, talismans, and masks, are portraits of her LGBTQ+ community. Babirye’s work speaks to the power of reclaiming personal and cultural identity through artistic practices, historical narratives, and cultural traditions. This exhibition, the artist’s first solo museum show in the United States, highlights the connection between past and present that is at the heart of our Contemporary African Art program.
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Step inside Leilah Babirye’s studio, and see how she fearlessly transforms wood, ceramic, and found materials into ambitious sculptures that reflect her LGBTQ+ community. Born in Kampala, Uganda, and based in Brooklyn, New York, contemporary artist Leilah Babirye is known for her highly expressive, ambiguously gendered sculptures. Featuring interviews with the artist and Curator of African Art Natasha Becker, this short documentary explores Leilah Babirye’s artistic process, connections to art from west and central Africa, and new work for Leilah Babirye: We Have a History.
The film, directed by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s Khamisi Norwood, is part of our original documentary series FAMSF Presents.
Learn more about the exhibition: famsf.org/exhibitions/leilah-babirye
Subscribe to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: youtube.com/@FAMSF?sub_confirmation=1
About the Exhibition
Born in Kampala, Uganda, and based in New York, Leilah Babirye is known for her highly expressive, ambiguously gendered sculptures in ceramic, wood, and discarded objects. Reclaiming ceramic and wood-carving traditions from western and central Africa, she hand builds her ceramics, firing them with expressive glazes, while she whittles, scorches, and burnishes her wood sculptures. As a final touch, she adorns them with wire, bicycle chains, inner tubes, and other found metals and materials. The sculptures, which range in scale from towering totemic forms to busts, talismans, and masks, are portraits of her LGBTQ+ community. Babirye’s work speaks to the power of reclaiming personal and cultural identity through artistic practices, historical narratives, and cultural traditions. This exhibition, the artist’s first solo museum show in the United States, highlights the connection between past and present that is at the heart of our Contemporary African Art program.
Watch more:
How Lee Mingwei's art is mending the social fabric
youtube.com/watch?v=ast8Vf20KhY
Inspired by personal and world events, Lee Mingwei’s art aims to bring people together in difficult times, promoting healing through connection. This short documentary traces the artist’s journey from his formative years in Taipei to his artistic beginnings in the Bay Area to becoming the globally renowned contemporary artist he is today.
How Artist Lhola Amira Is Making Space for Rest
youtube.com/watch?v=WpLz2rKiwrI
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, contemporary artist Lhola Amira responds to the wounds left by colonization across many disparate contexts to create spaces for healing through connection to the earth, the ancestral, and the spiritual.
Patrick Kelly: The American in Paris
youtube.com/watch?v=u59WAjIdqfM
Filmed in New York City, Paris, and the de Young museum, this short documentary celebrates the life, career, and legacy of Black fashion designer Patrick Kelly (1954–1990). Kelly’s evolution from “little young American from Mississippi to a grand master of fashion in Paris” is captured in vintage footage, as well as accounts of his friends and close collaborators.
