Bunmi Agusto: Tales By Moonlight

Bunmi Agusto: Tales By Moonlight is a mixed-media installation featuring moving-image, and a sumptuous suite of mid-scale compositions incorporating painting, drawing and printmaking, depicting, Within, Agusto's interior fantasy world, and the domain of her alter-ego, Ó.

In response to night-time African oral traditions of storytelling, Agusto's narrative features on this occasion a theatre set. Ghosts are seen preparing the night sky curtain indigo, referencing the ancient dyeing practices from Northern Nigeria. Cowrie shells are applied to adorn the curtain night sky, as stars. Shape-shifting spirits are seen supporting and transporting materials preparing the curtain.

Agusto's gaze is informed by her upbringing in Lagos, as a woman of Yoruba, Edo and Afro-Brazilian descent. Within is a paracosm, a complex, imaginary world in the artist’s mind that functions as a repository for all that she encounters in her waking life. Within reflects her interiority and the evolution of her selfhood through the lenses of cultural theory, psychology, spirituality and gaming. 

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.

In Focus: Bunmi Agusto - 2 October - 1 November 2025

Venue details