Temitayo Ogunbiyi's Playful Dialogue with Isamu Noguchi at the Noguchi Museum

Temitayo Ogunbiyi's first U.S. institutional exhibition, 'You will wonder if we would have been friends,' opened at the Noguchi Museum in New York from June 18 to November 2, 2025. The Nigeria-based American artist engaged in a philosophical exchange with Isamu Noguchi's legacy, focusing on play in public spaces. Ogunbiyi created interactive installations like 'You will pave paths of life with play' (2025), inviting audience participation. Her copper alloy sculpture 'You will revisit paths to friendship' (2025) was installed in the courtyard among Noguchi's stone works and functioned as musical instruments during performances by Batalá New York. Another installation, 'You will catalyze wishes of strangers' (2025), featured stones cast from West African grinding stones inscribed with phrases from Queens residents. Ogunbiyi displayed daily drawings in vintage wooden chests, depicting vegetables that also reference West African hairstyles. The exhibition highlighted Noguchi's playground designs, including his unrealized 1933 Play Mountain project and his only U.S.-built playground, Playscapes (1976) in Atlanta's Piedmont Park. Ogunbiyi's work draws from her experiences as a mother in Lagos, where she used household objects as molds and found inspiration in Yoruba hairstyles. The artist was born in New York, raised in Pennsylvania, and studied at Princeton and Columbia before relocating to Nigeria.