Chris Ofili
"Change is not indecision. The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending."
One of the most important artists to emerge in Britain during the 1990s, Ofili first came to public notice with his paintings incorporating elephant dung. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1998 and is considered one of the seminal Young British Artists. Since 2005, Ofili has been living and working in Trinidad and Tobago, where he currently resides in the city of Port of Spain. He also has lived and worked in London and Brooklyn.
Born in Manchester to parents of Nigerian descent, Ofili studied at the Chelsea School of Art from 1988-91 and the Royal College of Art from 1991-93. He became an established fixture of the British art scene through exhibitions with Charles Saatchi, becoming one of the few artists of African/Caribbean descent to break through as a member of the Young British Artists group. After winning the Turner Prize, he represented Britain at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.
Ofili's practice draws from a wide range of sources in both African, European and Trinidadian traditions, contemporary popular culture and art history. From his earliest days as an artist, he has investigated subjects pertaining to race, identity and the experience of being an artist of colour. Astonishingly rich and complex, his work resists easy categorisation.
