Chris Ofili (b. 1968)

Part of the artist’s series of ‘Afromuses’ painted over a period of ten years, Untitled (1999) by Chris Ofili is a watercolour of exceptional delicacy and vibrant, fluid colour. Ofili paints a woman facing forward, her expression one of stoicism, ambiguous neutrality, or, with her long neck and narrowed eyes, even aristocratic hauteur. The work pulsates with radiant colour: the patterning of the woman’s West African dress, but its patterning dissolves into waves of pure reds, pinks and purples; these shades of red react against the luminous dark brown tones of the woman’s skin and hair, and recapitulate the streak of muted pink that articulates the woman’s mouth, producing a composition of understated symmetrical elegance. Ofili painted his ‘Afromuses’ as studies or morning exercises before working on other pieces, and they possess a beguiling simplicity and spontaneity that reflects their origins. However they also serve as more complex explorations of personal and cultural identity, memory and representation. Somewhere between portraiture and iconographic, archetypal figuration, Ofili’s paintings excavate and re-formulate the visual building blocks of black culture, while resisting systematic readings that reduce the works to studies of racial identity alone.