Leilah Babirye’s ceramic head Nansamba II from the Kuchu Ngabi (Antelope) Clan (all works 2021) is a powerful, astonishing sculpture. With eyes closed, apparently lost in bliss or meditation, the magnificent piece, some four feet tall, patiently allows multiple washes of glossy blue glazes to stream down its huge smooth face. Nansamba II’s elaborate hairstyle is a tall and tangled wonder, rising almost architecturally about one and a half feet above its scalp. Constructed from old bicycle-tire inner tubes, this spectacular bouffant refers to, among other things, the artist’s former employment

The undead corpse of empire—wraithlike Babylon—breeds violence and contempt. I must implore those who were keen to term “War Inna Babylon: The Community’s Struggle for Truths and Rights” an “urgent” or “timely” exhibition to question exactly why this moment best served to accommodate such a show. Is it because the multimedia exhibition, arguably the most extensive presentation of Black British community grassroots activism produced to date, culminated in the first institutional presentation of The Killing of Mark Duggan, 2019, an investigation by Goldsmiths, University of London–based human