Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili’s playful, kaleidoscopic canvases consider desire and identity, especially as related to African diasporic traditions. The artist’s aesthetic and conceptual influences are legion: A member of the Young British Artists, Ofili has referenced Zimbabwean cave paintings, blaxploitation films, and Catholic iconography. He composes his lush, dense canvases from collage, glitter, and—perhaps most famously—elephant dung. Ofili studied at the Chelsea School of Art before receiving his MFA from the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited extensively in New York, London, Paris, Miami, Berlin, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. Ofili has presented at the Venice Biennale twice, in 2003 and 2015, and in 1998, he won the Turner Prize. His work has sold for seven figures at auction and belongs in the collections of the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.