Preview
Friday, February 14
by Invitation

Opening
Saturday, February 15
4 – 7PM

On View
February 15 – March 29 2025

Wednesday – Saturday
Noon – 5PM

Marta
3021 Rowena Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90039

Marta is honored to present Oríkì (Act III): Whispers of a Trail, the gallery’s third presentation of works by Lagos, Nigeria-based artist and designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello. The final act in the Oríkì series, following Friction Ridge and Tales by Moonlight (both 2023), this exhibition takes as its focus the artist’s interest in understanding the politics of extraction, refinement, procurement, and manipulation of a single, elemental material—copper.

Mined predominantly in the copperbelt, a natural region in central Africa that borders northern Zambia and south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo—and one that Marcus-Bello is personally familiar with, having spent a number of formative years in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital—copper is both abundant and elusive within the continent. While the material is literally of the earth—mined alongside cobalt, another extremely valuable metal which, like copper, is a necessary component of lithium-ion batteries—its profusion does not correspond with widespread availability. Copper has become a rare commodity in Africa, largely due to the convoluted cycle that it’s fed into, whereby, after its extraction, the metal is exported for processing and then imported back to the continent for sale at a premium. The cost, both financial and energetic, that this system places on the sourcing of raw copper reoriented the artist’s focus onto Lagos’ second-hand metal market, where copper is only sold for bulk scrap, by the kilogram. This venue speaks to the tension between global demand for resources and the regional realities of scarcity and labor—a throughline in the Oríkì series and Marcus-Bello’s greater body of work.

Procured with the aid of an extensive network of community members, those offering the titular whispers of material promise, the artist liaised with both crafts- and trades-people in order to utilize copper in the fabrication of four editions for tabling, seating, and lighting, both independent and merged in their function.

Epitomizing this social-communal effort is Daybed (2025). With its supports ingeniously cast from a single mold—Marcus-Bello collaborated with the same group of casters who helped realize the aluminum works that comprised Act II of the Oríkì series—this multifaceted work extends its lustrous surface from the seat of a chair, the two planes joined by a shared backrest from which a single candle holder extends upwards—a beacon and triangulation of use. Should one choose to sit or lie down, the span of Headrest (2025) curves with enough generosity to support either manner of repose. With reference to forms such as those of the Sotho and Shona peoples, this work represents the artist’s first exploration of continent-specific historic typologies, a unification of design that engages with the lineage of both the stool and the headrest, two forms of which diverse examples are found throughout the continent. Nearby, the off-center surface of Low Table (2025) luminesces on its stand of grey bricks, the bright face as sharp as a chance encounter with a newly-minted penny on concrete. In Charcoal Lamp (2025), the artist utilizes slender constructions of both copper and reclaimed American pine, the wood element blackened to symbolize ebony, a material that, like copper, has become another rare and highly regulated commodity on the continent to which it is native.

All of these works, from conception to completion, transcend mere utility and become metaphysical objects of significance, their glinting surfaces and elegant gaps a reflection of our greatest desires and most profound dependencies.

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Nifemi Marcus-Bello (b. 1988) 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 from Architectural Digest (2023), Hublot / LVMH (2022), and Wallpaper* (2021). 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), and the Denver Art Museum. Oríkì (Act III): Whispers of a Trail is the artist’s third solo presentation with the gallery. In late-2025, selections from all three acts of Oríkì will travel to Marcus-Bello’s adoptive hometown of Lagos for a presentation at Tiwani Contemporary. That exhibition will coincide with a retrospective of Acts I-III published in tandem with Apartamento.