Chris Ofili was born in Nigeria and raised in Great Britain. His work is referenced as diverse as traditional African ar, images from popular culture, and hip-hop music. Chris Ofili’s paintings explore contemporary black urban experience His intricately layered works combine bead-like dots of paint, inspired by cave painting in Zimbabwe, with collaged images from popular magazines.
Since 1992 Chris Ofili has included dried elephant dung. Combined with his parodies of 1970s black exploitation or blaxploition movies, comic book super heroes and “gangsta” rap music, his work addressed a complex matrix of issues that challenge sexual and racial stereotypes.
One of his painting, The Holy Virgin May, a depiction of the Virgin Mary, was an issue in a lawsuit between the mayor of New York City and the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it was exhibited there in 1999 as a part of the “Sensation” exhibit.
The painting depicted a black African Mary surrounded by images from blazploitation movies and close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung. Following the scandal surrounding this painting, Bernard Goldberg ranked Ofili #86 in 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.
More of Chris Ofili:
"Devil's Pie" 2004
Devil is a carnival character from Trinidad and Tobago; Pie refers to the highly sexualized figures in the piece and still celebrates the different colors and shapes of the women of color. The "Red Woman" is the fair skinned black female.
"Annunciation" 2006
Distorts the biblical themes of the Virgin Mary and Angel Gabriel. Demonstrates the strangely rough sexuality of Gabriel as he performs the "immaculate conception". Moved away from the traditionally white association, and suggested the he Africanises the angel figure to subvert our preconceptions of purity.
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