Temitayo Ogunbiyi

Temitayo Ogunbiyi (born 1984) is a Nigerian-based contemporary artist and curator. She is known for her exhibitions in several museums, the most popular being the playground installed at Italy's Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in 2020, known as You Can Play in the Everyday, Running.

Early life and education Ogunbiyi was born in 1984 in Rochester, New York. She grew up in Gwynedd and attended Wissahickon High School in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She currently lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria, and has lived there for the past nine years.

Career In 2012, her art was featured at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St Louis and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. She exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Diasporan Art in Lagos in 2013, followed by exhibits at Tiwani Contemporary, London in 2016 and in the second Lagos Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2019. Her art has also appeared in the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, New York, the Perm Art Museum in Russia, the Dom Umenia Bratislava in Slovakia, and the Berlin Art Projects and the Fries Museum in Berlin.

Ogunbiyi has constructed three functional playgrounds to date. She built her first one, using both construction materials and conventional household items, in 2018. That year her playground project was featured in a curatorial publication commissioned for the tenth Berlin Biennale. The playground was built to represent the voyage of enslaved Africans to Colombia. It led to the commission of her 2020 exhibition in Italy by Kathryn Weir, the then director of the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples.

Selected exhibitions Temitayo Ogunbiyi: You will wonder if we would have been friends, Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, New York (2025) 12th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2022) You will play in nuance and grow community, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2022) Capillarité, 31 Project, Paris, France (2019) You Will Find Peace and Play Among Palm Trees, Freedom Park Playground, Lagos, Nigeria (2018) Am I a Thief?, the Fries Museum, Berlin (2012) Extended Extensions, Lucas Gallery, Princeton University, Princeton (2006)