In 1998, Chris Ofili became the first Black artist to win the Turner Prize. Over the years this award, which was established to celebrate British artists working in the same innovative spirit as J. M. W. Turner, has gained notoriety for creating debate around controversial contemporary art. Ofili certainly shocked audiences with his provocative paintings – which were made in part from elephant dung. One man even dumped a wheelbarrow of cow dung on the steps of the Tate gallery, planting a placard of protest in its midst: ‘Modern art is a load of bullshit.’
Some have accused Ofili – with his signature use of elephant dung – of being gimmicky; but among his shock tactics the artist had something important to say. One of his winning works on show was the painting No Woman, No Cry: taking its title from Bob Marley’s famous reggae song, the large canvas depicts a Black woman weeping. The head and shoulders of this life-sized figure appear against a vibrant green-and-yellow background, divided up by a black fence-like pattern reminiscent of batik-dyed West African fabrics. As the woman cries pale blue tears, an orange flame creeps up from her heart and across her neck, emblematic of an all-consuming grief.
If you look closely at the artwork’s inscription, you can see that the woman is identified as Doreen Lawrence (now Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE), the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. In 1993, the eighteen-year-old was stabbed to death in an unprovoked racist attack by a gang of white youths, while waiting at a bus stop in south-east London. It took years of campaigning from the boy’s family, with the support of Nelson Mandela, to get justice for their son.
In 1999, a judicial inquiry concluded that the initial investigation into the murder of Lawrence had been harmed by ‘a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership’ within the Metropolitan Police. Crucial evidence went undetected; Duwayne Brooks, Lawrence’s companion on the night he was killed, was treated as a suspect, not a victim; arrests were delayed; and the relationship between police and the family broke down completely.
It was while he was living in London, in 1998, that Ofili painted No Woman, No Cry. Descriptions of the horrific murder of Stephen Lawrence had appeared across the media, and there was a massive outcry about the police’s failings to properly investigate the case, particularly in Black communities in the city. Ofili was moved to create his uncompromising artwork in tribute to Doreen Lawrence: ‘This kid had been killed by white racists. The police had fucked up the investigation, and the image that stuck in my mind was not just his mother but sorrow – deep sorrow for someone who will never come back. I remember finishing the painting and covering it up, because it was just too strong.’
Born in Manchester, England, to Nigerian parents, Ofili went on to study at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. Emerging as a young graduate in the ’90s, he soon became a prominent member of the London-based group of Young British Artists (YBAs), alongside Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin, who shocked the art world with conceptual art – in terms of both their message and anti-establishment materials: stuffed sharks, unmade beds, neon lights.
In contrast to his contemporaries, Ofili became best known for his paintings, in many respects traditionally made on canvas. However, he mixed media – oil and acrylic paint, graphite, polyester resin, newspaper, glitter, map pins and elephant dung – to break traditional rules, build up layers of meaning and expand representation. The artist also developed his very own contemporary iconography by combining cultural sources, from hip hop and Zimbabwean cave paintings to biblical imagery, in intricate kaleidoscopic paintings.
From the very start of his career, Ofili has used his art to celebrate Black culture and people. In an early composition from 1996, Afrodizzia, the artist has pasted images of well-known Black figures, from Nelson Mandela and Tupac to Will Smith, adorning their heads with hand-painted Afros. As he has explained, ‘Sometimes… I’m just blindingly obvious, an example being Afrodizzia, 1996. Like, bang, there it is. Afro head – celebration of Afrocentricity.’
Between 1995 and 2005, Ofili went on to create a series of 181 watercolours, titled ‘Afro Muses’, featuring busts of Black male and female figures, which almost entirely fill the space of rectangles painted a pale daffodil yellow. Women, who face the viewer, appear clad in colourful African clothing with richly painted jewellery, bright make-up and ornate natural hairdos: braids, bangs, side-swept twist outs, flipped-out ends. Similarly, the men sport natural Afro hairstyles and beards, while wearing abstractly embroidered robes.
These portraits, which came from Ofili’s imagination, parade the ‘Black is beautiful’ philosophy and aesthetic. Reflecting their African heritage, each of the figures is attractive without being eroticised, as is often seen in the media. The ‘Jezebel’ stereotype – the lascivious, uninhibited Black woman – often depicted in film, specifically Blaxploitation films of the 1970s and music videos. Instead, Ofili’s ‘Afro Muses’, who are accompanied by tropical flowers and bright-feathered birds, personify powerful creative visions borne from a Blackness that has not been caricatured or exploited.
With this series, Ofili revels in the reality of Black identity beyond resilient and reductive racial stereotypes. While imagined, his figures are represented as a spectrum of inspirational individuals, identifiable through their unique expressions and countenances, distinctive outfits and original hairstyles. Ofili is also playing on the cliché that all Black people look alike to someone outside their racial group.
Similarly, with No Woman, No Cry, Ofili explodes another trope – that of the Strong or Angry Black Woman, popularised in films and TV shows. On screen, the likes of Mammy in Gone with the Wind or Minny Jackson in The Help, are presented as strong, sassy and fearsome women not to be messed with. The steely, resolute Black woman struts confidently, hand on hip; but she definitely doesn’t cry.
Since the death of her son, Doreen Lawrence has shown remarkable resilience and bravery. She has continued to campaign for justice for victims of racist crime, founding the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, which she has now left to launch her new charity, the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation, to advance social justice and tackle racial inequality for future generations. She has been awarded an OBE for services to community relations and in 2013 was made a life peer in the House of Lords, where she continues to act as a voice for the marginalised: ‘There are positives that have come from my son’s death. Laws have been changed in his name, which have made life better for people. Then there’s the fact that I’m in a position to talk to the prime minister and I’m now sitting in the House of Lords able to talk to judges. It’s positive that I’ve got a voice that I can use.’
However, she has also reflected on the insurmountable pain which drives her actions: ‘To say that I’ve been dignified and strong all the time would be far from the truth. On the outside people think that I’ve not crumbled, but I have. I’ve had to step up to the plate because if I hadn’t, Stephen and his legacy would be forgotten, and I don’t ever want my son to be forgotten.’ As if granting Doreen Lawrence’s wish, Ofili has inscribed the words ‘R.I.P. Stephen Lawrence’ – discernible beneath the layers of paint and elephant dung – in the poignant picture. Ofili also represents his muse’s vulnerability and pain, which flows from her eyes in tears, each containing a tiny collaged photograph of her son’s face. The painting can be read as a modern-day pietà: meaning pity, the pietà is a popular subject in Christian art, which depicts the Virgin Mary sorrowfully contemplating the dead body of her son. Echoing the grief-stricken figure of Mary, Ofili’s figure is treated with tenderness and intensity, invoking compassion in viewers for both Doreen Lawrence and all mourning mothers.
No Woman, No Cry is a dedication to all victims of racist injustice as well as Doreen Lawrence. The emotive expression of Ofili’s figure embodies the true pain of Black people harmed by racist stereotypes, discrimination and violence. Moreover, the power of this piece is in the muse’s tears: she acts as a powerful political statement, a form of visual activism and an enduring site of protest.