Turner Prize-winning artist Chris Ofili was born in Manchester, UK in 1968. He is best known for being a member of the YBAs (Young British Artists) movement in the 90s, and for incorporating elephant dung into his paintings.

Ofili earned a BFA from the Chelsea School of Art in London and a BFA from Royal College of Art. Ofili’s modernist style gained him attention in the 90s with its subject matter varying from Italian soccer player Mario Ballotelli to blaxploitation paintings, deriving his approach in painting from various cultural sources such as Zimbabwean Cave painting, for example. His use of texture has gained him a lot of appeal.

Ofili was awarded the Turner prize for his exhibition “Sensation” in 1998. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and in 2005 he relocated to the island Trinidad where he currently resides. This experience of moving to Trinidad has allowed Ofili to continue to paint with biblical references, and bring in a focus on Trinidad’s landscape and mythology.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Saatchi Collection, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Ofili’s solo exhibitons include; Southampton City Art Gallery, UK (1998); Kesternergesellschaft, Hanover (2006); the Arts Club of Chicago (2010); Tate Britain (2010); The New Museum, New York (2014).