Deep Shit

Deep Shit: A conversation with Chris Ofili
by Paul D. Miller

Due to the controvery that surrounds almost any dynamic critique of Afro-Diasporic Culture, Chris doesn't normally do interviews. This is a peek into the mind of an intense and interesting painter - one whose work "The Virgin Mary" caused such a culture storm in New York that our beloved Mayor Guiliani called for an entire museum show to be cancelled. I like to think of these conversations as templates for a more progressive view of Afro-Diasporic culture in a dynamic context.


Shit. It's one of those words that appears so much in our contemporary culture's discourse that one is forced to think of it in terms of some meta-context-from the sense of extreme "periodicity" in hip-hop, N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitude) tracks to the Freudian connotations of political extremists' claims for the need to purify the "body politic" of undesirable elements. With Chris Ofili's work-patterns and nodes, layers of transparent resin and, of course, hip-hop-one is confronted with a different value system: art is uniquely wedded to the mythology that he constructs around the dialogical world of what some call "ghetto fabulous" reality. Constipation, enemas, "purges"-all in Western culture are viewed as dysfunctional responses to a human body burdened with the psychosocial implications of a "mind-body" problem. Coprolites (the technical term for the fossilized feces of animals and humans) in Ofili's work are like nodal points-they hold together the patterns of collaged images around the imaginary characters that populate his canvasses. As in places like India and West Africa where elephant dung serves a utilitarian purpose, Ofili's work marks a distinct paradox of African Diasporic art in a European context. It forces the viewer to confront the hybridity of Ofili's multiple identities: African, Black British, Human.
Any approach to African Diasporic art viewed in a European post-colonial context is, like Freud used to say, "strictly verboten," constipated. Ofili is, like they say in hip-hop, all about flow.

(the article begins here):
Paul Miller: Though there are elements of both formalist work and a critique of black culture, a lot of the furor over your style of painting has come from the remix and the use of found objects: the photographs, place, context, beads. From what overall direction are you coming?

Chris Ofili: I always think of the work as coming out of hip-hop culture, which is an approach to making things and looking at things with no hierarchy. Everything just gets everything. The site has been bombed out, anyway, and you just bring whatever you want to it. And that's the way I see the situation with art and painting. The whole thing's just been kind of blown apart, and it's wide open for me to bring anything and everything to it. I don't want to say that this is above that, or this is more important than that. The elements just exist as they are, as individual things. But at the same time, once they're put in that new context, they become something else.

PM: That critique of context gives your work a lot of strength. A Brazilian could see something in that painting-the style, especially with the beads and stuff-or a Nigerian, in terms of what is going on in Yoruban, Australian Aboriginal, or even Haitian culture with spirit bottles, where they use beads, too. It all depends on which area of the world you're looking from. It has a resonance that stretches over geography and into radically different cultures.

CO: The most important thing is what people bring to the work, really. Not necessarily what the work is giving out to people. I mean, that's from my point of view, because I make the work and I put so much of what I know into it. But then I think it's also a mirror. It allows people to see themselves and reflect their own ideas in the work.

PM: There are two artists from an older generation who resonate for me when I look at your work. One is Sigmar Polke, of course, with his critique of the surface, the reflective gauze and the resins. The way he would layer newspaper prints. There seems to be a deep structural resonance. What do you think of that?

CO: No, Polke is someone whose work I identify with but at the same time, idealistically, he's coming from a very different point of view. That's what happens. Once you get beyond what you're looking at, you get beyond the surface of the work, and then the ideas that it contains start to unfold. Here we separate. Though I wouldn't like to say what he's dealing with, he's done good anyway.

PM: Well, I thought one of his earliest-or strongest-resonances was using newspaper print and recontextualizing it, cutting it out and leaving the residue on the painting. In your work isn't this tied to the whole critique of political issues? What about Keith Piper? His last show, "Relocating the Remains" (shown at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999) was about the shattered aesthetic or the diasporic aesthetic.

CO: Yes, but at the same time I am trying to bring in, not everything, but a lot of the stuff that has been left out. Not the things that you might find at the ICA in London, like books, or the ideas that might come out of museum coffee shops, but rather just magazine culture and the junk of "the every day." The junk, wow, that is what's interesting. Like the fly, the flies that you find around junk, and all the other stuff that isn't considered high culture.

PM: One thing that black culture consistently deals with is "the every day." It's almost a battlefield for the minds of people as they live in their urban context.

CO: Yes, to transform that into something else. To take on and let go of clothing and talking styles. It's always difficult to try and explain exactly what's going on in the work, because it has to do with what I'm living.

PM: So do you find that you are by osmotic process absorbing the London environment as a nomad?

CO: Yes. It's funny, because I always like to think of myself as being located in the center of culture, but I'd rather take a position that's slightly outside of things so I can see all of it. Not the heart, but the debris on the outskirts. Really, I'd like to see the things that get rejected, as well as the things that get accepted as worthy of being on the main stage.

PM: Believe it or not, that's similar to what was going on with Alain Locke back in Harlem in the twenties, when he created a journal of philosophy called the New Negro, which was a really important thing in the jazz scene. The jazz painters, like Aaron Douglas, were always talking about music and culture as a way of dealing with the everyday. So when I saw your stuff, I was kind of looking at it as post-Hendrix painting, you know? With a voice that crept into the culture by visually trying to render it.

CO: Okay, but in a way, I am just trying to make them so noisy that there isn't noise. It kind of cancels itself out, levels itself out. Not noise to the point that it doesn't distort. Rather to the point where it actually starts to form its own melody.

PM: That's what Public Enemy did. You know, bring the noise.

CO: Exactly.

PM: But with all these strange resonances, even the jazz guys like Romare Bearden and his colleagues, always talk about organizing principle. The jazz guys are looking to create music as a healing space, and then Bearden is trying to visualize that. So when that gets to a hip-hop context, the pain and the psychological element is like a post-double consciousness, the Dubois kind. It makes me think of the great Charles Mingus book, Beneath the Underdog. It's his written testament about jazz. He goes schizophrenic, and all his personalities get bugged out. In the first paragraph, he's three people. He critiques both being the instrument and coming out of the instrument, then being this guy signing contracts, and then the contracts that are reflections of himself. A lot of hip-hop is the business, the business. Like, we are the first generation of Afro-American, or Africans born to truly embrace, or somehow be absorbed by capitalism. That's what Public Enemy's whole noise thing was about. But in London, people like you or Kodwo Eshun critique that from a place of centeredness to psychologically deal with that in a way that's healing. I mean, in the U.S., the environment's far more corrosive.

CO: Right, right. (Laughter) It's harmful to your health, apparently. In the end, I'm trying to bring something up out of the rubble that's pleasing to look at. And I don't know, it might not necessarily make you think of good things, but at least it stimulates your thought. It's always really complicated to pin things down to say, "It's this, it's that," because it's, kind of, everything, really. And in a way, what I'm trying to do is to promote contradiction because that's the reality of the everyday. One side of the street is this. You cross the street and things change. Instantly.

PM: There's a classic myth of Legba out of Yoruban mythology. Two friends see a guy wearing a hat walking down the street, and they're in the middle of their fields. And one guy sees the hat, and says the hat is black, and the other guy sees the other side of the hat, and says the hat is white. It's a classic myth. So, the friends start arguing about the hat. And they're like, "Yo, the hat was white," and the other guy says "No, it was black. What are you talking about?" And they actually go to war. It is a hilarious myth of the Legba as a trickster playing with visuality.

CO: The bottom line is, there was a hat. And that's the fun of it, really. It doesn't really matter what color it was. In the end, there was a hat. And that's the main point of discussion.

PM: So would you say that your work could be a focal point for socialization?

CO: Well that's when I get really excited. That's when the work is performing its function. If there is a function for the work, it is to allow people to it's a magnet, a magnet for people's thoughts, ideas, and arguments, and hopefully, it will allow people to feel free to disagree with themselves. Not necessarily with others. But to allow them to think one thing, and then to think another thing completely openly. And freely. And not to be so intent on right and wrong.

PM: That means that there are many layers of meaning. I think a lot of times black culture is forced into a position of the politically correct, which actually caters to a European aesthetic of clarity and linear thought. But a lot of what happened with the diasporic culture is that sense of being the first Generation X, where everything was erased, and you had to rebuild linguistically, psychologically, culturally. It is like the beat in your work, the pointillism where Roy Lichtenstein with the characters is based on . . .

CO: Sigmar Polke.

PM: Polke. Yes. So, when you do an Afro-diasporic critique of that, all of a sudden, it becomes highly charged, eroticized, and sexual, which is again the reference to black culture.

CO: For me, on a practical level, it's to the beat in music, because when the dots are made, there's constantly this tapping noise (tapping sounds) when they are being put on. That comes out of just being in the studio and listening to music. That brings me on to other aspects of the work, which is something I've tried to explain many times. Even though it has much to do with hearing music, and it may sound like an illustration, it's not. It's not the kind of illustration of music. It's more, trying to find something that's almost like listening, looking. If you listen to something, it goes into the part of your brain that deals with sight. And I'm trying to make paintings that make you hear them, rather than see them. So actually, you're looking at music. So it will teach your eyes to hear, and your ears to see.

PM: What about other references, in black pop culture? What about the roll call, or name call. That's been a serious issue throughout the twentieth century. Each performer, each artist, has a roster of names and references; instead of a kinship clan actually related by blood, it's by ideas, the posse, the crew. What other artists would you reference from either this generation or previous?

CO: Well, in a way, I don't try to separate being, and being artists. I wouldn't like to think that my posse only consists of artists. I don't think society only consists of people who think the way artists think. That's why it's great to have a catalog essay written by Kodwo, because he obviously has the ability to bring other things to it. And, not necessarily things that people might understand instantly. But, you know, so what? The whole artist thing can be a bit dried up.

PM: I definitely see a consistent theme with people like Ol' Dirty Bastard, definitely a lot of the Wu-Tang crew.

CO: Yes. I'm just trying to mark this time, really. They are the faces we see every time we flip open a magazine. It's most def, it's fantastic. You see them everywhere now. And so, he starts creeping into the work. Lil' Kim, she's been around for a while now, but, again, she's still kind of getting into the December issues of the magazines, so she's creeping back in. Biggie Smalls. But then there are more obscure people that we don't necessarily know like Cats from London. There are so many. Sports figures. Preachers and teachers. And people like Gill Scott Herron. It just goes on and on. PM: Okay. What about the gaze. I'm really fascinated with the way you mark it out, or sometimes leave it open. What's that about?

CO: It has something to do with being looked at. It's like, if you remove some of the gaze or the ability to return the gaze, then it's almost like you take away the viewer's identity. Or you take away their critical eye. Lately, I've been dealing with being able to see the work in the dark. If you take away the light, which is so fundamental to looking at art and looking at paintings, the work still has a life-like when you turn off the CD player, and the song continues in your head although you don't hear it. Or when you hear the first song in the morning, and you hum it all day. It's that kind of light: the ghost of a painting or the ghost of a song. This is something I have been trying to abstract. Like the third eyes. I'm trying to push the work: less imagery, more lights out. Sort of abstract, spiritual, the essence of an idea rather than the idea itself.

PM: So in that sense, it resonates with Bridget Riley, and the whole patterns Op art thing.

CO: Yes. She's like a diva, man. I mean, in terms of picture making. That stuff from back in the sixties is still useful. You still wonder, "Fuck, what's going on? How am I supposed to look at this? What is it? What is it doing to me?" Physically, anyway. But then it's so useful on a visual level because it scrambles your thought. That's what I was talking about with music and looking. Teaching your eyes to hear and your ears to see. For a few split seconds, your brain doesn't compute. You're just stimulated, but you don't know exactly what you're supposed to do with it. Then it gets in the right place. You think of it as Op art, black and white, and you start to understand exactly what's going on. But it's a bit like hearing a new track by an artist that you don't know. It's what you get in clubs. It's like, "What's this?!" When everyone runs to the deejay booth, and tries to follow the vinyl around to find out what's going on. Then you see it's a white label.

PM: The "dub plate special."

CO: Yes, exactly.

PM: Any video stuff coming out, maybe? Or record covers?

CO: I'm just trying to open things out, really. I'm going to do an album cover. For guys on the Ultimate Dilemma label, The Runaways.

PM: Like, uh, Mary J. Blige, and all that stuff?

CO: Yes, I did an interview with Mary J. Blige.

PM: It was coolS a lot of her music is about pain and transcendence. You know, just like your portraits.

CO: Yes, there are links between what these musicians are saying and what I'm doing. It makes sense to me. But it's like, I'm so knee deep in it that there's no strategy. I'm just wading through it and taking the occasional break and putting on the next mission of it.

PM: Let's go back to the black woman issue. Because that's the whole controversy with the black Virgin Mary. And you, of course, have all the pornographic images as cutouts. Is it a critique of the sexuality that you find missing in our world situation?

CO: I think, with a painting like that, with THE HOLY VIRGIN MARY, (1996) there are so many layers of meaning. And that exists, hopefully, with pretty much all of the paintings that I've made. There are so many layers of meaning. So many contradictions. And that's why I think it's been, dare I say, misunderstood. In a sense, only one level has been looked at. It's kind of like seeing the Wu-Tang Clan as being only Inspectah Deck. (Laughter) But there are those other guys. And they've all got solo deals. And they've all got like two albums each. So it keeps going on and on and on. Only seeing hip-hop as KRS-One, one of the early cats, but there are so many other layers to the whole family tree. So, it's about critique. It's about the way the black woman is talked about in hip-hop music. It's about my religious upbringings, and confusion about that situation. The contradiction of a virgin mother. It's about the stereotyping of the black female. It's about trying to make a nineties hip-hop version of the Virgin Mary that would include, therefore, everything that I think she's about. It's about beauty. It's about caricature. And it's about just being confused. But at the same time, it's about not being uncomfortable with that state of mind. And seeing that as a full palate. Rather than just black and white. So, you know, it's the gangster coming out with his full clip. (Overlapping voices) (Laughter). Scratching itSbut I'm just properly scratching it. (Laughter)

PM: Right, right. Would you say that you and Kara Walker draw some sort of controversy from the older generation? Do you notice that? Do you get that vibe? In one sense she's dealing with a similar critique, but you guys have radically different content. What do you think of that?

CO: I think the jazz generation's very different from the hip-hop generation. Really. I think the jazz generation had this real problem facing the audience, and was afraid of selling out. And I think the hip-hop generation is really not afraid to say all the bad and the good. And to make fun of what's considered sacred. I feel kind of loose. I just kind of relax and I don't know, it's just we've got to move on. You know. We can enjoy all of what we've got, and not be on our knees all the time. Stop thinking, "Oh shit. I can't say that, that might upset somebody," or "I can't play that record. Because there's an old guy over there, and he really won't like the swearing."

PM: That's what makes for unease on the part of the older artist, perhaps. They built their whole structure in that nebulous no-man's-land, and perhaps our generation is a lot more, well, probably the first generation of Africans. A lot of these issues come together in the canvas, even if it's a subconscious impulse, that's why it creates such a furor. People are not used to that sense of ease and self-confidence coming out of an African diaspora. And that's what makes it a post-colonial situation.

CO: It has been necessary for me to make some progress as an artist. To really feel that there are no restrictions. Almost likeSyou can play anything. You can mix it. You can mix rock and roll with Beethoven and not feel as though it was an illegal connection.