Bunmi Agusto

Bunmi Agusto is a world-builder (artist, writer, curator and art historian) focused on fantasy and magical storytelling. In her practice, she combines painting, drawing and printmaking to create vibrant compositions of a fantasy world she calls ‘Within’. Within is a paracosm in the artist’s mind that functions as a repository for all that she encounters in her waking life. The figures in her work are often family, friends and passersby pulled from reality and into her world as cross-reality migrants through their encounters with her. As a result, Within is a reflection of her own interiority as she uses the otherworldly braided landscape as a site to explore psychology, cultural theory, spirituality and the evolution of selfhood through the lens of fantasy.

 

Her gaze is informed by her upbringing in Lagos, Nigeria as a woman of Yoruba, Edo and Afro-Brazilian descent. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, an MA in History of Art & Archaeology from SOAS University, London and a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, for which she received distinctions in all three degrees.

 

Recent Exhibitions include;  Clouds Never Die, TAFETA, London (solo - 2025); The Cave, Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, E-Werk, Freiburg (solo - 2025); Dialogue Between Two Clouds, Jnane Tamsna, Marrakech (solo - 2025); Growth of the Soil, Kristin Hjellegerde Gallery, London (group - 2025); TEFAF Maastricht, TAFETA, Maastricht (group - 2025); India Art Fair, kó, Delhi (group - 2025); Lands of the Living, DADA Gallery, London (solo - 2024); Collecting Now, Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Lagos (group - 2024); Untitled Art Fair, kó, Miami ( group - 2024); 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, TAFETA, London (group - 2024); Dallas Art Fair, TAFETA, Texas (group - 2024); New Contemporaries, Camden Arts Centre, London (group - 2024); TEFAF, TAFETA, Maastricht (group - 2024);  Yinka Shonibare CBE RA: Free The Wind, The Spirit and The Sun, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (group - 2023); New Contemporaries, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (group - 2023); MFA Degree Show, Ruskin School of Art, Oxford (group - 2023); Chasing Spirits, Foreign Agent, Lausanne (group - 2023); Reverie, DADA Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria (group - 2023); baby hair and afros, Vortic Curated, London & Santa Monica Art Museum, Los Angeles, Virtual Reality (group - 2023); Outside, kó, Lagos (solo - 2022); Psychoscape, TAFETA, London (solo -  2022); Escape To Within, DADA Gallery, London (solo - 2021).