Chris Ofili

British · b. 1968

Chris Ofili (b. 1968, Manchester) is a British artist whose richly layered paintings explore identity, desire, mythology, spirituality, race, and cultural memory. His early works became known for combining paint with glitter, collage, resin, map pins, and elephant dung, creating dense surfaces that drew from African visual traditions, hip-hop, jazz, popular culture, religion, and art history. After moving to Trinidad in 2005, Ofili developed a more fluid and atmospheric approach to colour and figuration, influenced by the island’s landscape and environment. His practice moves between abstraction and representation, often bringing together biblical stories, classical mythology, Black cultural histories, and contemporary imagery. Ofili won the Turner Prize in 1998 and remains one of the most influential British painters of his generation.