No Woman, No Cry 1998
Acrylic, oil and mixed media on canvas
243.8 x 182.8 cm
Tate. Purchased 1999
© Courtesy of the Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Photo: Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Chris Ofili says 'the way I work comes out of experimentation, but it also comes out of a love of painting, a love affair with painting.' He mixes a wide range of cultural references, from the Bible to pornographic magazines, from 1970s comics to the work of artists such as William Blake. He also experiments outside the traditional confines of oil paint, introducing things like elephant dung into his work; he enjoys the tension between the beautiful paint surfaces and the perceived ugliness of the dung.
Chris Ofili was born in Manchester, England in 1968. From 1988 to 1991 he attended Chelsea School of Art, and continued his studies at the Royal College of Art until 1993. He won the Turner Prize in 1998 for his 'inventiveness, exuberance, humour and technical richness in painting,' as seen in his exhibitions held at Southhampton City Art Gallery, and in Sensation at the Royal Academy.
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Chris Ofili was born in Manchester in 1968. He studied fine art at the Chelsea School of Art and completed a master's degree in painting at the Royal College of Art in 1993. His first solo exhibition was in London in 1991; he has shown in group exhibitions in Manchester, London, Basel, Zimbabwe, Rochdale, Berlin, Tokyo, Glasgow, New York and Hamburg, and in "Brilliant!" New Art from London at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1995.
"The Holy Virgin Mary," his 1996 painting of a black Madonna with a clump of elephant dung on one breast and cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines in the background caused quite a stir.
"It all seems very distant and confusing to me," Ofili said. "It's like a play, and somehow I got mentioned in the script. I think there's some bigger agenda here."
When Mayor of New York Rudolph W. Giuliani threatened to cut off the museum's city subsidy and remove its board if the show which contained Ofilis work, was not canceled, he singled out "The Holy Virgin Mary," along with several other works, as "sick stuff."
Cardinal John O'Connor called the show an attack on religion itself. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said it found Ofili's painting offensive, too. After seeing a photograph of "The Holy Virgin Mary" in the exhibition's catalogue, the league's president, William A. Donohue, issued a statement saying people should picket the museum.
Ofili said in a telephone interview: "I don't feel as though I have to defend it. The people who are attacking this painting are attacking their own interpretation, not mine. You never know what's going to offend people, and I don't feel it's my place to say any more."
In interviews since he won the Turner Prize for young British artists , Ofili spoke broadly about his unconventional approach to art, including his use of elephant dung and his Roman Catholic upbringing.
The British-born artist talked about his African heritage, which led him to visit Zimbabwe, where he was disturbed by the remnants of colonialism he encountered and was moved by the beauty of the land and its wildlife, he said.
This isn't the first time that Ofili, 31, has found himself in the center of a hailstorm. After he won the Turner Prize, the $32,000 award given annually by the Tate Gallery of Art in London, several London critics denounced the choice as gimmicky and dubbed Ofili the Elephant Man.
But he said that this time he felt besieged by the public outcry because he and his work had been singled out. Ofili, who has a master's degree from the Royal College of Art in London, is widely known in the art world, and his work is in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
Elephant dung, which has become something of a signature in Ofili's paintings, is in large part a cultural reference to his African heritage.
He describes himself as a churchgoing Catholic, although he does not attend every Sunday. Ofili went to state schools in Manchester and became interested in furniture design before gravitating to art.
When he was 24 he decided to learn more about his roots. He won a scholarship to travel and paint for eight weeks in Zimbabwe.
His use of elephant dung, which he gets from the London Zoo, is in many ways a reaction to what he saw and felt in Africa.