CCA Andratx is pleased to present Lines That Sing, a solo exhibition by Bunmi Agusto featuring a new series of work that includes painting, drawing, and video. For the first time, the artist presents artworks that are almost entirely abstract, deepening her exploration of how the fields of musicology and cymatics can be translated into the language of visual art. Agusto investigates ways of representing phenomena such as sound, vibration, rhythm, and harmony, transforming auditory experiences into visual compositions.

Bunmi Agusto constructs rational systems for what might otherwise appear irrational, mapping the hidden mechanisms that underpin reality. She draws inspiration from her personal experiences, thoughts, and reflections on philosophical, social, and cultural matters,which she addresses through the lens of her Nigerian identity and heritage. Her artworks offer a glimpse into the richness of her inner world.

All of the works have been carefully composed, and their visual harmony is at once subtle and deeply striking. By combining different shades of blue, pink, magenta, brown, and grey through horizontal and vertical lines, Agusto creates beautiful rhythms that seem to dance and move across the painted surfaces. In earlier works, hair functions as a central motif in her otherworldly landscapes signalling her internal world’s location literally being in her head. Over the years, her thin hair-like lines have evolved from merely representing organic matter to functioning as the underlying neural network of her world. In this abstract body of work, she focuses on these lines to highlight the capacity for the weave to transmit invisible information. 

The idea to paint music emerged after Agusto visited an exhibition by Peter Doig and was particularly struck by a work in which the British artist appeared to “paint” the vibration of a guitar in motion. Following this experience, she began experimenting with depicting vibrations using different patterns, marks, and color schemes until she discovered her own way of making lines sing. The works in this exhibition follow a scientific logic drawing inspiration from computational reasoning and the structural principles found in textiles, which frequently rely on binary coding to create patterns capable of extending indefinitely—an idea that lies at the heart of the artist’s interests. Binary code represents numbers using only two digits: 0 and 1. Although it was officially introduced in the 17th century, this method had already been explored centuries earlier and has been fundamental to the development of mathematics and modern science.

Agusto re-roots these explorations in the natural world in an abstract film that draws parallels between music and breeze as their waves and vibrations move through space affecting palm fronds and breeze blocks. The palm tree is another recurring motif in Agusto’s practice as she positions it as the sacred cosmic bridge between the heavens and the earth in accordance with Yoruba mythology. Whilst, the breeze block is an architectural form found in most tropical modernist architecture, especially in both Nigeria and Mallorca. In this film, the negative space they hold becomes fans in the skies amidst the palms.

Bunmi Agusto (born 1999, Nigeria) is an artist, writer, curator and art historian focused on fantasy and magical storytelling, especially from a West African perspective. Her practices are informed by her upbringing in Lagos, Nigeria. She is of Yoruba, Edo and Afro-Brazilian descent. Her mixed-media artworks combine painting, drawing and printmaking to depict otherworldly landscapes merged with geometric compositions that draw from West African aesthetics embedded in her cultural consciousness. 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 United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and China. She has curated both historical and contemporary exhibitions as well as consulted for television, theatre 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.

Text by Bunmi Agusto and Darlyn Carreira Krause, 2026