Bunmi Agusto (b. 1999, Lagos) is a world-builder and storyteller concerned with unseen worlds and their metaphysical architectures. Moving across dreams, folktales, imagined realms, lost civilisations, cosmologies, and theories of the afterlife, she constructs rational systems for what might otherwise appear irrational and maps the hidden mechanics that underlie reality.

As a writer and art historian, Agusto thinks critically about fantasy and magical storytelling, often weaving together scientific theories, global mythologies, and contemporary narratives. Through this interdisciplinary lens, she positions the fantastical as a method of inquiry that reveals the coded structures shaping both inner and outer worlds.

Artist, writer and art historian born in Lagos, Nigeria. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from the University of Oxford, an MA in History of Art & Archaeology from SOAS University, and a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. Her artworks have been exhibited in Nigeria, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany and China. She has curated both historical and contemporary exhibitions as well as consulted for television, theatre, design and fashion projects. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Financial Times, Condé Nast Traveller and Boy.Brother.Friend. In 2023, Agusto was selected as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries. She was also awarded the Mansfield-Ruddock Prize in 2023, the Clarendon Scholarship in 2022 and the Cass Art Prize twice in 2019 and 2020.

Anna Ortiz is a Mexican-American painter living in Brooklyn. Growing up in Worcester Massachusetts, Ortiz spent much of her childhood visiting her family in Guadalajara Mexico. There she studied art with her grandfather Alfonso who was a professional portrait painter as well as with her aunt Lolita, a professional sculptor.

Ortiz’s surrealist landscapes reference the cultural divide she and so many second generation Americans feel. Their narrative nature references ancient Aztec and Mayan mythology while reflecting back on current and personal events. Out of the ruins of their previous existence, these new creatures inhabit a borderland between memory and imagination. Dualities define them; they give them shape. Weaving together invented spaces with references to actual places, the paintings take both a familiar tone and a sense of the uncanny. 

Ortiz is a recipient of the 2024 NYFA Artist Fellowship. Ortiz has had solo exhibitions with Mindy Solomon Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects and Dinner Gallery. She has shown her work with 1969 Gallery, Johansson Projects and Monya Rowe. She has also exhibited internationally, at the CAN art fair in Ibiza, in Mexico City with MAIA and in London with Soho Revue. Her work has been featured in Art Forum, Maake Magazine and Colossal. She has been the recipient of various residencies including Yaddo, CCA in Mallorca and The Golden Foundation. She currently holds theMcMillan/Stewart Endowed Chair Fellowship; a year long visiting artist position at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Tania Alvarez creates psychologically charged paintings and sculptures depicting everyday interiors, and architectural spaces, that are devoid of human presence. Working in a variety of materials and techniques, including sculpture, fabric, stone, wood, found material, collage, and painting, Alvarez’s work creates a chronicle of her life, both time-stamping the creations with self-specific objects; while also manifesting an autobiographical structure for viewers to explore. Each piece serves as a narrative vessel, inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences while navigating the cloistering effects of our contemporary digital landscape.

Her work explores the intersections of personal and collective memory, showcasing how individual stories contribute to a broader cultural tapestry. Her pieces often weave intricate narratives, which act as surrogates for the human experience.

Tania Alvarez (b.1983 Sevilla, Spain) lives and works in Catskill, NY. She holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2017 and a BFA from Pratt Institute in 2005. Recent solo exhibitions include Through Painted Panes, CHART Gallery, NY, New York (2024); and P.O.V., Miriam Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2020). Recent group exhibitions include The Golden Thread: A Fiber Art Show, Bravin Lee Programs, New York, NY (2024); P(re)view, Galeria Belard, Lisbon, Portugal (2023); Interlude: A Five- Year Residency Retrospective, The James Castle House, Boise, ID (2023); Home Works, CHART Gallery, New York, NY (2023); Dwelling, White Columns, New York, NY (2023); McNay Print Fair, McNay Museum, San Antonio, Tx (2023); Inside Out, Scroll Gallery, New York, NY (2022); Rostro, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022); and Nice Work 2, Sulk Gallery, Chicago, IL (2022) among others. She is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, and was an artist-inresidence at the James Castle House in Boise, ID; The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY; The Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA; and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China. Alvarez’s works are in the permanent collections of the University Art Museum at the University at Albany and the Boise City Department of Arts and History in Boise, Idaho.

C. Lucy R. Whitehead (b. 1991, Liverpool, UK) is a London-based artist focusing on painting and sculpture. She holds a BA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Art and an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, where she was awarded the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship. She has had solo exhibitions at Megan Mulrooney Gallery in Los Angeles, Soho Revue in London and Incubator in London. She has also exhibited at NADA art fair in New York and Miami and Untitled Art Fair Miami, among others.

She makes figures that blur the line between body, object, and role, placing them in landscapes and interiors where they try on identities that never fully fit. Her work explores identity as performance. Characters masquerade as people, stretching, compressing, and dissolving into their surroundings, teetering between the uncanny and the familiar. In this sense, her paintings are almost like mockumentaries of everyday life: staged, slightly exaggerated, and unsettlingly recognisable.

Whitehead holds these figures in suspension on the canvas, like specimens preserved in a jar: contained, displayed, and turned into spectacle. Within the frame, they echo the boxes and stereotypes that organise daily experience, straining against boundaries that both define and restrict them. Through this push and pull, she is interested in how the body is encountered not as a fixed symbol or possession, but as something inhabited, exhibited, and continuously renegotiated.