Bunmi Agusto is a world-builder (artist, writer, curator and art historian) focused on fantasy and magical storytelling. 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.

In her art practice, Agusto 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.

She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and was featured in the Free The Wind, The Spirit and The Sun exhibition curated by Yinka Shonibare CBE RA at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London in 2023. She was selected as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2023. She was also awarded the CCA Andratx AIR Prize in 2024, Mansfield-Ruddock Prize in 2023, the Clarendon Scholarship in 2022, and the Cass Art Prize in 2019 and 2020. She designed a limited edition wrapping paper for The Big Issue in 2024 to raise funds to combat homelessness in the UK. She has consulted and collaborated on fashion, theatre and television projects. She notably created artwork for the Kenneth Ize SS22 catwalk at Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2021. She consulted on puppet design for Theatre Rites, specifically developing designs for a dance performance choreographed by Gregory Maqoma in 2024.

Her writing practice is primarily self-published on her Substack ‘In Search of Magic’ where she explores fantasy and magical storytelling, both ancient and contemporary. She explores comparative mythology, often cross-referencing myth and folktales with scientific theories. She has contributed essays to DADA Magazine as well as the 2025 Nigerian Pavilion for the London Design Biennial, for which she was brought on as a Cultural Collaborator. Following her research and writing on The Remediation of Egúngún Masquerades in Contemporary Nigerian Art, she curated the exhibition 'Masking the Unseen’ at MILIKI, Lagos in 2022 featuring the works of the artists Yadichinma Ukoha-Kalu and Wale Matuluko, highlighting contemporary remediations of mask traditions as a modes of capturing intangible essences.

She is also an avid gamer and credits games like The Sims and The Legend of Zelda for sparking her love of world-building. Her fascination with world-building extends outside of fantastical contexts and into the realm of architecture. As an architecture enthusiast and researcher, she collaborated with Young Aspiring Nigerian Architects (YANA) to create a website that acts as a digital resource for Nigerian and West African architectural history.