Black Art with a Bang: Chris Ofili’s Controversy

First there were calls for racial diversity amongst barbie dolls, now it's in regard to art. Permanent art collections in the UK’s galleries, to be specific. On the 5th September 2020 groups of protestors gathered outside the National Portrait Gallery in London, chanting “Where is the spice??”, and holding placards with “I Can’t See My Self...”, and “Black Artists Matter” printed in capitals. There’s an urgency for black representation in the art world, and the inclusion of black artists in UK galleries. It got me thinking, if you’re looking for a black artist who made shockwaves in the art world with the turn of the century, then Chris Ofili is your man. 

Artistic moulds were torn to shreds in the late 1980s and 90s, namely with the radical bomb that was the Young British Artists. A ‘loosely-affiliated’ group of artists that utilised sensationalism in response to their controversial methods and materials, who sparked controversy with every exhibition. They make up some of the most famous artists today, think: Damien Hirst’s shark suspended in formaldehyde, Tracey Emin’s unmade bed, and Jenny Saville’s fleshy portraits. 

Chris Ofili belonged to this group of radical artists, and in 1998 became the first ever black artist to win the Turner prize. He won with a piece that commented on the murder of Stephen Lawrence in an unprovoked racist attact in 1993, by depicting the victim’s crying mother. However it was with his 1996 piece: ‘The Holy Virgin Mary’ that Ofili generated a whole onslaught of controversy and criticism. Imagine taking religious icons and equating them to images from porn mags. He did just that... and made it sparkly. 

The work in question is an 8ft tall, 6ft wide mixed media piece which combines paper collage, oil paint, glitter, polyester resin, map pins and elephant dung on linen. It’s visually striking. A black Virgin Mary stands in the centre against a shimmering gold background; the glitter suspended between layers of resin and paint gives it a textural quality. She’s dressed in traditional blue for the Virgin Mary, and all the gold amplifies the Byzantine feel to the piece. The small cherub-like objects that surround her are explicit cutouts of black genitalia and buttocks. Ofili is challenging the viewer’s preconceptions of what something means to be ‘sacred’, as well as reclaiming Mary’s ethnicity as Middle Eastern - which it is said to have been in the Bible, despite the common depictions of her as Caucasian. 

His most recent works explore blackness and black identity, with the use of elephant dung inspired after a trip to Zimbabwe in 1992. He uses the dung to raise his works off the floor, to suggest “a feeling that they've come from the earth”. There is dung on her right breast decorated with push pins that resemble a nipple, perhaps a nod to the fertile nature of the Virgin Mary, in combination with all the surrounding genitalia. Her reproductive ability is the source of her power, and Ofili acknowledges and praises this, albeit crudely. 

It was at the ‘Sensation’ exhibition in 1997 where ‘The Holy Virgin Mary’ was displayed alongside other works by the YBAs, which shot them to fame. The exhibition travelled from London to the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and the world went nuts. Ofili was ranked 86th in American journalist Bernard Goldberg’s list: ‘100 People Who Are Screwing Up America’, and the former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, singled out the work and labelled it as ‘sick’ and ‘disgusting’, claiming that dung had been ‘thrown’ at the piece. He went as far as to attempt to withdraw the museum’s $7 million annual grant from the City Hall because of the offence he took, yet was taken to court and lost the case. 

Two months later, the work was vandalised by a 72-year-old retired school teacher named Dennis Heiner, who faked illness to pass a security guard and squirt white paint from a bottle onto the piece, which he then smeared over Mary’s head and upper body. Heiner’s simple reasoning behind his defamation was: “It’s blasphemous”. The work was promptly cleaned and damage avoided, and Heiner received a $250 fine.

Despite the uproar surrounding him, Ofili didn’t respond to the criticisms, commenting only: “When I go to the National Gallery and see paintings of the Virgin Mary, I see how sexually charged they are. Mine is simply a hip-hop version.” Brought up with a Catholic education, Ofili utilises the narrative influence of religion to inspire discussions and change perspectives. Its shocking works like these that remind us to not accept things as they are just because tradition says so. 

20 years on, and Ofili’s piece is more relevant than ever. He turned his back on the cerebral attitudes of postmodernism and opted for kitsch, colour, and controversy to make his point. You don’t need expensive paints or an interesting subject matter to make a statement, just printed porn and some scissors.

See original article