Organized by Charlene Prempeh

On View
October 22 – December 20 2026

Acne Paper
Palais Royal
124 Galerie de Valois
75001 Paris, France

Thursday – Saturday, 11AM – 7PM
Sunday, Noon – 7PM

A Measure of the Moon features work by Lagos-based artist and designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello, whose practice bridges commercial and artistic disciplines. Working across furniture, product design, installations, and research-driven projects, his work explores the social, cultural, and economic systems that shape everyday life. Central to his practice is an ongoing exploration of materials and production methods. Through collaboration with local industries and craftspeople, he investigates how materials can be pushed beyond their expected uses to produce new forms and typologies.

For A Measure of the Moon, Nifemi Marcus-Bello meditates on his celebrated sculpture series Oríkì (Acts I–III), where cultural memory and material identity are examined through singular materials ubiquitous in Nigeria. Here, Marcus-Bello continues his enquiry into material culture and questions how over-consumption in the global north dictates material availability and economic viability in the global South.

The moon, in this context, is an omnipresent instrument for measuring change. Across many African societies, time was historically tracked by observing the movement of the sun, recurring phases of the moon, and specific constellations—a celestial rhythm connecting ceremony, agriculture, gathering, storytelling, and everyday life. As measure and prompt, the moon serves as both provocation and balm.

Time as a cyclical proposition demands regeneration and phasing: materials are used, recovered, and redistributed; craftsmanship is revived and reframed; scarcity gives way to abundance. Marcus-Bello’s experiments in form suggests that the material, cultural, and ancestral riches of Nigeria can be replenished. “Objects carry traces of what came before, suggestions of what might come next, and an expression of what is happening now,” says Marcus-Bello. “[They] create a continuous cycle of use, transformation, and renewal where time becomes inextricable from material.”

Nifemi Marcus-Bello is a Lagos, Nigeria-based artist and designer. Recognized for his community-oriented, ethnographic approach to design and its adjacencies, Marcus-Bello exploits material constraints in pursuit of new forms. His interest in manufacturing scales, production availability, and design anthropology have led to accolades and invitations from Apple (2026), Architectural Digest (2023), Design Miami (2023), Dezeen (2024), The Graham Foundation (2022, 2025), Hublot/LVMH (2022), Loewe (2025), Monocle (2023), and Wallpaper* (2021, 2022, 2026). In 2023, his Friction Ridge Bench was acquired by The Art Institute of Chicago; in 2024, the artist’s TM Bench with Bowl was acquired by both the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Other works by the artist reside in the collections of The Design Museum (London), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Denver Art Museum, and SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). Oríkì (Acts I–III) were presented at, by, and with Mart Los Angeles, who represents the artist’s sculptural works in the United States and beyond. In late-2025, all three acts of Oríkì traveled to Marcus-Bello’s adoptive hometown of Lagos for their inaugural presentation in Nigeria. That exhibition coincided with a retrospective of Acts I–III published by Apartamento, entitled Oríkì: Material Affirmations in Three Acts. A Measure of the Moon is Marcus-Bello’s first presentation in France, and his first collaboration with Acne Studios and Acne Paper.