Leilah Babirye will participate in the 18th edition of the Lyon Biennale, To pass from one dream to another. Inspired by the traboules – distinctive passageways running through Lyon’s courtyards and buildings – the biennale explores movement from one mode of perception to another, from one collective dream to another. Spread across significant sites in Lyon, the exhibition unfolds through interwoven dimensions: the industrial at the Grandes Locos, the relational at the Musée des Tissus, and the existential at macLYON.

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Leilah Babirye’s works are presented in a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. The exhibition is centred on a new body of evocative sculptures, inspired by the idea of the queer wedding, which feature the artist’s inventive reuse of debris with her deft carving of wood and work with ceramics. Each sculpture adopts a role – bride, groom, ring bearer, flower girl, bridesmaid, or groomsman – in a vivid installation that is both wedding ceremony and celebration. The exhibition will be accompanied by the artist’s first book.

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Leilah Babirye’s work is included in a group exhibition of contemporary figurative sculpture in the gardens of Worcester College, Oxford. Sculpture in the Garden: The Storytellers presents the work of fourteen artists and is structured in five acts – each inspired by a line from Shakespeare – as a tribute to the outdoor plays performed for over ninety years by the Buskins, Worcester’s student dramatic society and the oldest in Oxford.

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We are delighted to announce that Leilah Babirye’s sculpture Nabbira from the Kuchu Omussu (Edible Cane Rat) Clan, 2021, is now part of the permanent collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Work by Leilah Babirye will be featured in the group show Shifting the Silence, at Lenbachhaus, Munich, opening on 14 October 2025. Borrowing its title from Etel Adnan’s last book, the exhibition reflects on the challenge of verbalizing  works of visual art and making them tangible, inviting visitors to embrace the inexpressible in a poetic way.

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The de Young Museum, San Francisco, presents We Have a History, Leilah Babirye’s first solo museum show in the United States. Known for her highly expressive, ambiguously gendered sculptures in ceramic, wood and discarded objects, Babirye creates portraits of her LGBTQ+ community, thereby speaking to the power of reclaiming personal and cultural identity through artistic practice. Exploring historical narratives and cultural traditions, the exhibition highlights the connection between past and present that is at the heart of the de Young’s Contemporary African Art programme.

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We congratulate Leilah Babirye on being shortlisted by High Line Art for the Fifth and Sixth Plinth Commissions on the High Line at 30th Street, New York.

High Line invites the public to share feedback on what works they would like to see realised. Share your comments here.

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