This exhibition highlights a defining aspect of Babirye’s artistic practice: sculptures that incorporate the visual traits of African masks, merging the traditional with the contemporary. Babirye crafts with metal, ceramics, and hand-carved wood, adding rubber, nails, and other found objects to create contrasting textures. While rooted in the ruling kingdoms of present-day Uganda, Babirye’s artwork goes beyond historical representation. Instead, it weaves personal history and resilience into ambitious sculptures that create space for queer joy and liberation. Emerging from the artist’s own experiences of struggle, Babirye’s art transcends the personal. Through her experiments with form and materials, she is able to convey powerful emotions, provoke thought, and push the boundaries of creative expression.

"Since early childhood Corinne Smith, who also goes by Critty Smitty, has been sensitive to the unknown. Suffering from night terrors, sleep paralysis and, sometimes, a strange difficulty in distinguishing between what is real and what isn’t, Smith is of the notion that maybe it all lies somewhere in between. With the use of Silene Capensis root, also known as the African dream root, the Oakland-based artist has been practicing guided meditation and dream re-entry to access powerful dreams that provide knowledge and symbolism to establish further connection to the divine ancestral lineage and to promote healing. ‍"