Temitayo Ogunbiyi has clear memories of the neon fillings of the apology chocolates a 7-year-old girl gave to her after calling her a nigger on the school bus. She has clear memories of another girl who refused to touch her because she was afraid it would turn her black. She was raised in suburban Philadelphia.

When she was asked to design a temporary playground for the courtyard of the Madre · museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples, Italy, Ogunybiyi found herself reckoning with memories of being a black child in America. “I had never reached back that far,” she says. “We weren’t raised to deal with pain. We were raised to get over it.”