Artist: Bunmi Agusto

Tiwani Contemporary presents Tales By Moonlight, an In Focus presentation by Bunmi Agusto who centres drawing at the core of her multidisciplinary practice and evolves episodic narratives featuring the psycho-spiritual encounters of a heroine in her own likeness on a pilgrimage of individuation and self-discovery.

Tales By Moonlight, by world-builder, Bunmi Agusto, 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.