Temitayo Ogunbiyi

Temitayo Ogunbiyi (b. 1984, Rochester, New York) is an artist and curator who grew up in the outskirts of Philadelphia and is now based in Lagos, Nigeria. Born to Jamaican and Nigerian parents, she holds a BA from Princeton University (2006) and an MA in Art History from Columbia University (2011). Her practice moves between drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, with work that explores influences ranging from Yoruba hairstyling and Victorian hairwork to botanical forms and transnational travel.

Central to her work is the "You Will" series, which began in 2016 as pencil on paper drawings and has expanded into painting and public sculpture. The series fuses hairstyles with botanical forms, drawing on shared geometry and texture between the two. The title of each work is a declarative prayer — a structure taken from colloquial Nigerian speech, where prayer functions as a confirmation of what is to come rather than a request or plea, and where the forms reference transnational relationships and generations of people journeying across lands and seas.

The most ambitious works in the series are her public play sculptures, which grew out of Ogunbiyi's experience raising her children in Lagos — a city of over 20 million people where she struggled to find public playgrounds — and her earlier experience growing up as a first-generation immigrant in the United States. These works aim to present play and exercise as a right for all children and adults, incorporating the gesture of wrapping to bring together references including Victorian Hair Work and Yoruba hairstyling. Playground projects have been commissioned by Freedom Park in Lagos (2018), the Museo Madre in Naples (2020), the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2022), the South London Gallery (2023), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2023), and the Museum Tinguely in Basel (2023).

Ogunbiyi has exhibited internationally, including at the 12th Berlin Biennale (2022), Tiwani Contemporary in London, and numerous institutions across Europe and the United States. In 2025, she presented You will wonder if we would have been friends as a solo exhibition at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York. A solo exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, is forthcoming in 2026. She is a recipient of a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship.