“Using a combination of painting, drawing, and printmaking, Agusto juxtaposes opaque drawn figures with translucent printed images in order to explore the relationship between the physical and unseen metaphysical forces. With art references to ancient mythologies, Surrealism, the Zaria Art School, and the semiotics of comic books, her works come together to narrate a magical tale that depicts death as transition and afterlife as simply another form of life. She draws from overlapping elements across Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and Yoruba religious ideologies—such as the concept of axis mundi and the positions of heaven and earth—to introduce a geometric logic to the nature of existence” — DADA Gallery.
‘Lands of the Living marks Bunmi Agusto’s first solo exhibition sice the completion of her MFA from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, where she was awarded the Mansfield-Ruddock Prize and her inclusion in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023.
Image: (detail) Bunmi Agusto, ‘Inhabiting Spirit Bodies (Umbanda)’, 2024, courtesy DADA Gallery.
