Inside Fantasy Ikoyi, the blood-red "third space" at the heart of Lagos' SoHo.

Ademola Street in Ikoyi, Lagos, runs between a strange mix of buildings: homes, hotels, and the carefully hidden Mako and Lagos Jet Ski Riders club on one side, walling off the water; on the other, galleries, homes, a church, and a blood-red building called Fantasy Ikoyi.

The building’s colour is unavoidably the first thing you notice, and it upends any assumptions of what its purpose is supposed to be.

“It’s cherry red. Red can be a beautiful thing. You go to Morocco, you go to Mexico, you see places that are red themed, down to the floor and it’s so beautiful. But in Nigeria, we assume that red is bad, evil, or occultic. I think that’s been most controversial thing about Fantasy Ikoyi, but somehow it’s become one of our tools.”

Tayo Okoya, Fantasy Ikoyi’s founder, has spent his career building visually ambitious worlds: first the fashion brand World Black Fantasy, then Forbidden Knowledge, a Lagos-set open-world game. He calls Fantasy “a third space, an indie house, a haven for creatives.” Fantasy also serves as a social members club, an art residency, a print atelier, and a creative workshop. Its range is wide enough that if you took a shot in the dark, you’d hit something.

“I’ve been living in Ikoyi my whole life and I’ve been a creative. But there’s never been space for like-minded creatives to meet, communicate, and build together. There’s no structure for that in Lagos. I saw that problem and decided to create a platform where people could come together and commune.”

Fantasy has spent the months since July becoming that nexus of creative people in the city. Though it has only soft launched, the building has already become a shorthand for a certain kind of Lagos image: its gallery wall, double-height lobby, and red exterior appearing in music videos by OctobersRich, Zinoleesky, and YKB, and on the cover of Fola’s 9.

But beyond how cool it looks in music videos or with Gostic’s red Mercedes-Benz W115 parked in front (the only car Tayo lets in the compound), its most telling quality is the range of experiences it houses.

It was, on one day, the site of Famous Pluto’s birthday party, and on another, Kelechi’s Conscious Conversations. It’s hosted the Board Meeting Chess Club and the Patta Running club, a mix rare for any single space to hold.

The clearest test of this idea was the pop-up for Ashley Okoli’s THE SOURCE.

“Ashley’s event was an eye-opener for us. She took us to school, literally, to see the potentials of what you could do with the space. And her event was a huge success. I wish it was a two-day thing because it was a wonderful experience.”

THE SOURCE unfolds across three chapters: “Black Fuel,” “Crude Bloom,” and “The Girl with the Gun.” For the event, Fantasy took on the visual language of the book completely: the violent, dripping red, the guns, the chickens from her shoot in Ogun State, from the painting on the gate to the interior decoration.

Beneath this rich tapestry of parties and pop-ups, Fantasy’s actual focus is more concise than its programming suggests: visual art, specifically Nigerian underground visual art. Almost all of their in-house curated events have been centred on art. Walk in and it’s clear, from Addie’s illustrations on the diesel generator outside to the paintings covering the inner walls, that the space is dedicated to that focus.

“Everything we do is based around art. I believe visual art comes before music, before anything else, so right now, we’re building the floor for Nigerian underground visual artist.’’

The vertical gallery wall that greets you at the entrance shows the vibrant world Fantasy is curating: a confluence of works by Moukho, Icaross, M the last airbender, widemouthart, and others, mounted side by side. Two patterns repeat across them. One is the electric use of primary colours, a similar palette to Fantasy’s exterior and World Black Fantasy’s pieces. The other is characters and storytelling over abstraction. In Icaross’ You’ll Burn Your Hands, characters like Puncher’s Chance and Squid Ranger “embodied things I was insecure about,” he said, and he put them in “things that I found cool, like boxing, pop culture, Power Rangers.” Even the titles echo each other: World Black Fantasy’s Overdue Awakening and Fantasy’s own Eyes Wide Open pop-up read almost as a pair.

The traffic through Fantasy’s doors, whether first-timers or Tayo’s own network, gives these artists exposure that’s hard to manufacture on purpose. This month, that mission took concrete form in a live auction on the website: over 30 works by artists from all over the country, following pop-ups and exhibitions including Icaross’ first solo show and a showing of Moukho’s archival works.

“We have foundation. Fantasy is one of the only places that gives these artists ground to feel at home. We mount their work every day, and we try to put them in situations where, if you make this painting with this group of people, you’re more likely to hit that dome than doing it alone. You’re part of a tribal community that has produced wonderful artists. The mistake most artists make is thinking they can do it by themselves.”

Beyond art, that sense of community appears in one repeating image across all of Fantasy’s events: people together, cross-legged on mats, sitting in chairs or standing, experiencing one another.

Written by Soala Iyalla