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Nagirinya from the Kuchu Ngo (Leopard) Clan

Leilah Babirye, 2021

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

Nagirinya from the Kuchu Ngo (Leopard) Clan is a sculpture by Leilah Babirye made for the 2021 Coventry Biennial exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery.

Like most of Babirye’s work, the ceramic head is an attempt to highlight the plight of the LGBTQ+ community in the artist’s native Uganda.   

Born in Kampala, where she studied fine art, Babirye fled her homeland in 2015 after being outed in a local newspaper. Homosexual acts carry a life sentence in Uganda and LGBTQ+ activism is illegal. In 2018 she was granted asylum in the US, where she now lives and works.   

Babirye’s series of ceramic portrait heads are loaded with imagery and symbolism. The heads all carry the name of a Ugandan clan, of which there are 52, many named after animals. In addition to the clan name, the titles feature the term ‘kuchu’, an underground word in Uganda’s Luganda language that members of the queer and trans community use to address each other.    

Babirye often uses detritus in her sculpture. The hair on this portrait is made from bicycle-tyre inner tubes. This is an allusion to the pejorative name given to a gay person in Luganda, ‘ebisiyaga’, meaning rubbish. References to masks in Babirye’s work are a nod to the queer people who are forced to hide behind them for fear of hostile exposure.   

The acquisition of Babirye’s Nagirinya from the Kuchu Ngo (Leopard) Clan marks a significant step in the Herbert Art Gallery’s current drive to add more work by women and non-binary artists of colour to the collection.   

More information

Title of artwork, date

Nagirinya from the Kuchu Ngo (Leopard) Clan, 2021

Date supported

2022

Medium and material

Other

Dimensions

121.9 x 50.8 cm

Total cost

19165

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