NEW YORK, NY.- The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum presents Temitayo Ogunbiyi: You will wonder if we would have been friends, the first solo museum exhibition in the United States by Nigeria-based artist Temitayo Ogunbiyi (b. 1984). On view from June 18 to November 2, 2025, the exhibition features sculptures, paintings, and drawings installed through- out the Museum’s first-floor galleries and garden.

This exhibition takes place in a milestone year for The Noguchi Museum, as the institution celebrates its 40th anniversary. For four decades, the Museum has been a space of exploration, reflection, and dialogue through Isamu Noguchi’s (1904–1988) legacy and its ongoing programming. In this spirit, Ogunbiyi’s work— focused on the intersection of play, community, and global histories— provides a poignant continuation of Noguchi’s belief in art as a tool for physical engagement and shared experience.

Ogunbiyi’s work responds to global events, anthropological histories, design, and botanical cultures, forging dialogues between these themes. Increasingly focused on the role of play in society, Ogunbiyi has drawn inspiration from Isamu Noguchi’s exploration of open-ended, non-directive play to expand sculpture’s civic potential. For this exhibition, Ogunbiyi has created site-specific interactive installations for play, sculptures for music making, and an outdoor installation incorpo- rating input from the Museum’s greater community.

Curated by Matthew Kirsch, Curator and Director of Research at The Noguchi Museum, the exhibition spans four of the Museum’s galleries and features a diverse selection of works, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, and maquettes. “How can we exist with deeper presence while striving for more?” says artist Temitayo Ogunbiyi. “My practice explores the tension between similarity and difference—how those before us and those we encounter shape our sense of self and aspirations. I often begin with botanical observations, hair textures, disrupted patterns, and omitted personal archives that challenge dominant narratives. Studying Japanese from an early age shaped how I engage with materials, and living in Lagos has led me to reflect on the intersections of Yoruba, Edo, and Japanese cultures. Returning to New York, a city I once called home but now feel distant from, reminds me that our unique experiences can help us navigate shared human connections. Isamu Noguchi, deeply engaged in play and interactivity, seemed caught between cultures, seeking ways to connect across geographies. I, too, see the U.S. as a platform for broader conversations—ones that go beyond ancestry and borders.

It’s an honor to share my work here and now, and I hope it sparks dialogue that resonates.”

The work and interests of Ogunbiyi align with various facets of Noguchi’s own practice, from an interest in the world of discovery through play, to the reinvigoration of time-tested materials and methods, and a broader exploration of the artist’s place within both their community and nature. Ogunbiyi has created two distinct series of works that engage in direct conversation with Noguchi’s permanent display. In the indoor/outdoor galleries (Area 1) is a cluster of bronze musical sculptures, which are activated by educators during daily public tours. In the tranquil outdoor sculpture garden, a series of copper alloy grinding stones is installed in conversation with Noguchi’s Practice Rocks in Placement (1982–83). Each grinding stone was cast from a well-worn example used by, and passed down within, the families of friends of Ogunbiyi’s. For Ogunbiyi this once ubiquitous tool for food preparation holds both familial specificity and universal value. They represent shared investments of dreams, labor, and intentions for future generations. For the first time, Ogunbiyi has invited members of an exhibiting institution’s community to contribute written messages that are engraved upon the stones. This installation highlights the multilingual borough of Queens.

In addition, Ogunbiyi has reimagined her recurring sculpture series Sweet Mother (2022–25) for the factory environment of the Museum’s interior galleries (Area 5), where it coexists with a selection of drawings and paintings referencing plant-life and hair-threading techniques made over the past decade. Elsewhere, in Area 6, Ogunbiyi has created a three-piece steel interactive sculpture, You will pave paths of life with play (2025), and seating area designed for freeform play. Influential examples of Isamu Noguchi’s play models and maquettes chosen by Ogunbiyi—specifically Play Sculpture (c. 1965–68), Riverside Playground Study (c. 1961), and Slide Mantra Study (c. 1966)—are displayed outside of Area 6, further expanding the dialogue between Ogunbiyi’s contemporary work and Noguchi’s innovative designs for play.

The sinuous outlines of the bar elements that form the interactive and musical sculpture groupings trace pathways that Noguchi likely traveled between important sites from his personal biography. Ogunbiyi researched these routes by walking in Queens using personal navigation apps—methods she has used to determine the shapes of her other site-specific interactive sculptures, in each instance visualizing historical and/or contemporary migration routes taken by indigenous, itinerant migrant or immigrant communities. These contoured elements invite participation and suggest finding one’s way in the world. This dynamic interplay between past and present, nature and the built environ- ment, invites the viewer to reconsider how art can transcend traditional boundaries, inviting both physical interaction and intellectual reflection.

“Temitayo Ogunbiyi’s work offers a compelling dialogue with Isamu Noguchi’s legacy, bridging his interests in play and nature and his contemplation of a civic role for sculpture through a contempo- rary lens,” says Matthew Kirsch, Curator and Director of Research at The Noguchi Museum. “Ogunbiyi considers how art can foster connection—between individual people and their environ- ments and with generations past. The installation of her sculptures in the setting Noguchi created, and alongside his play models and maquettes, is not only a conversation across time but also an invitation to re-engage with the world through touch, movement, and reflection.”

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1984 and raised outside Philadelphia, Ogunbiyi is an artist whose work explores themes ranging from Yoruba hairstyling and Victorian hairwork to botanical forms and transnational movement. Currently living in Lagos, Nigeria, Ogunbiyi’s focus on playground design stems from raising her children in a city with limited public play spaces. Influenced by her upbringing as a first-generation immigrant to the United States, born to Jamaican and Nigerian parents, Ogunbiyi creates public play sculptures that emphasize play and exercise as universal rights. “Temitayo Ogunbiyi’s work draws deeply from Isamu Noguchi’s exploration of play, offering a contemporary interpretation of his belief in the power of sculpture to invite physical interaction and creative discovery,” says Amy Hau, Director of The Noguchi Museum. “By reimagining play as both an artistic and communal act, Ogunbiyi not only honors Noguchi’s legacy but also expands it, creating pieces where viewers can engage with art in a way that bridges cultural, historical, and personal connections.”