12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Temitayo Ogunbiyi lives and works in Lagos, NG

You are somewhere new. You inhale novel air, willing your feet to remember the path as they traipse unfamiliar cobblestone sidewalks, concrete roads, and dirt. Your body is learning how to immerse itself into this strange landscape; your eyes are learning what it is that you must see to find your way in—and then back out again. You are looking for the familiar, willing your body to encounter something known. You search and search and search and search and search…

You are looking at living earth. You run it through your fingers, and from the soil, rip plants that will continuously renew themselves. As you hold these specimens—unknown to some, designated as weeds by others—you consider that perhaps like these plants, you are unwanted here. Some consider you, as well, to be invasive—but you know this plant. You know it has the power to heal and you know it as an offering—if you are a weed, it is only because you are what you eat, and what you eat can grow on your head.

In Temitayo Ogunbiyi’s drawings, you are looking at living botanical histories. You are seeing home formed in mouths, home oscillating around tongues, home sliding down the esophagus. You are looking at a recipe for how to make home wherever it is that you go.

Maryam Kazeem

Exhibitions

Utopia Dystopia: The Myth of Progress Seen From the South, 2021, Madre – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples (IT)

Giocherai nel quotidiano, correndo, 2020, Madre – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples (IT) (solo)

Capillarité, 2020, 31 PROJECT, Paris (FR) (solo)

2nd Lagos Biennial: How to Build a Lagoon with Just a Bottle of Wine?, 2019, Lagos (NG)

You will find peace and play among palm trees, 2018, Freedom Park Lagos (playground), Lagos (NG) (solo)