Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Contemporary Art Studies, Prof. Önder Yağmur, Editör, Detay Yayıncılık, Ankara, ss.1-369, 2020
Chris Ofili is a Turner Prize-winning black British artist who both opposes traditional understanding of art and references African traditions in his work. In almost all his work, the elephant excrement he uses is constantly visible. Ofili took an artistic stand against racist approaches and multiculturalism around the world, especially in Europe and America, with the image of elephant excrement that he associated with his African roots.
“If you look at the extension of the other in art, many artists, such as Chris Ofili, are known to question the concepts of the other, othering, identity and sexuality on bodies. The conceptual approaches of artists over the other may be due to an important reason, one of which is that with modernism, the way of seeing and the classical understanding of the body are changing” (Ozkesici, 2017). Ofili, in his works where he uses elephant excrement, imposes a sacred meaning on black bodies in his other position. An important figure in contemporary art, Ofili's art is the reaction to superiority over black bodies that are othered by whites. Ofili art is the search for answers to the otherized identity problem, which is almost identified with its cultural past.
One of the principles of postmodernism expressed by Barret is the Holy Virgin Mary “(Barret, 2012), which supports the idea that art should not be separated from life, that art can and should refer to things other than itself, that art can and should be something different from its own form, and is open to post-modern criticism. In the post-modern period, we can say that Ofili's black bodies are related to the social, political and historical structure of the period. Post-modern theory allows for cultural fragmentation around the world, changes in space and time, new lifestyles, subjectivity and new forms of culture to exist. All these facts constitute the social, economic and cultural infrastructure of post-modern theory. The analysis of these facts, on the other hand, offers new and assimilable perspectives that do not contradict the current developments of post-modern theory. Post-modern theory, which criticizes modern faith and representation today, tries to make sense of the new living conditions of societies from its point of view. After the 1980s, post-modern discourses became influential all over the world and indirectly influenced the artistic products produced.
Ofili, especially with his work the Holy Virgin Mary, referred to slavery and the racist approaches it spawned, drawing attention to the European system of slavery and the racist approaches that still continue against blacks today.
Keywords: Chris Ofili, Racism, Slavery, Holy Virgin Mary