The paintings rested on balls of elephant dung. Chris Ofili, a young British artist with Nigerian parents, used dung as a material and a support, alongside glitter, resin, map pins and collage. In 1998, he won the Turner Prize, Britain’s most famous art award, becoming the first Black artist to do so.
Early life and style
Ofili was born in 1968 in Manchester to Nigerian parents. He studied at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. In 1992, on a scholarship trip to Zimbabwe, Ofili was inspired by ancient cave paintings and began using elephant dung in his work. His paintings were dense, colourful and layered, combining patterns, references to Black culture, music and religion, and humour.
The Turner Prize and the Holy Virgin Mary
His 1998 painting No Woman, No Cry depicts a weeping woman and pays tribute to Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a Black teenager murdered in a racist attack in London in 1993. The painting is held by Tate. Ofili won the Turner Prize in 1998. His painting The Holy Virgin Mary (1996) depicted a Black Madonna with elephant dung and collage. When it was shown in the Sensation exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to cut the museum’s funding.
Ofili represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2003.
Trinidad and later work
He moved to Trinidad in 2005, and his later work reflected Caribbean landscapes and mythology. His later projects included large woven works and murals, including a Grenfell Tower memorial work at Tate Britain unveiled in 2023. Ofili opened doors for Black British artists and remains one of the most significant artists of his generation. Ofili said elephant dung connected his work to Africa and to nature. He varnished it, decorated it with pins and used it to lift paintings off the floor, making the works feel like objects as well as images.
Music, culture and prices
Many of his paintings refer to hip-hop, reggae and Black popular culture, as well as religious art, mixing humour and reverence. His works now sell for large sums at auction and are held by major museums, including Tate and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Chris Ofili turned one of the least glamorous materials imaginable into a signature. The art world gave him its biggest British prize for it.
