Temitayo Ogunbiyi

The series "The Drummers and Their Drumbeats" by Ghanaian filmmaker Anita Afonu, commissioned by Culturescapes, focuses on a selection of artists whose works are presented in scope of Culturescapes 2023 Sahara. Temitayo Ogunbiyi has lived in Lagos, Nigeria for over 10 years. She was born in Rochester, New York in 1984 and grew up in Gwynedd, Pennsylvania. She received her BA from Princeton University, New Jersey in 2006 and her MA in Curatorial Studies and Critical Art Theory from Columbia University, New York in 2011. Her work has since been shown in numerous exhibitions in St. Louis, Lagos, London, Brooklyn, Perm, Bratislava, Naples, and most recently in 2022 at the Berlin Biennale and in Eindhoven. The artist has received numerous grants and awards, including a Smithsonian Artist in Research Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. As an artist, who also curates, Ogunbiyi explores the potential of playful interaction to explore themes of migration and exchange, as well as material and social cultures. She develops them along models of thought between environment, lineage, and representation. In doing so, she creates dialogues between global current events, anthropological histories, and botanical cultures. The systems that capture, mediate, and direct the movement of people and goods are often the subject of her investigations. Her work materializes in drawings, paintings, sculpture and installation.  As part of Culturescapes 2023 Sahara, she presents the exhibition You will follow the Rhein and compose play at Museum Tinguely in Basel.