Afro Margin

Chris Ofili
Afro Margin
at David Zwirner

8 pencil drawings of sizes ranging around 3 x 2' in size. The drawings focus on vertically piled objects, which are Ofili's "afro heads", piled high on the page to make a vertical "totem pole".
The composition dominates in these drawings, the space broken by lines of these afro heads, and thus create the "margin".
Ofili has in the past used such afro heads to convey the common notion that ‘all black people look the same’.
All heads are made into distinctly different shapes and sizes by Ofili. In this exhibit the heads are less accentuated as black heads than in previous works, allowing the viewer to treat the structures as optical barriers and abstract objects. The compositional use of the structures allows for a stark visual contrast between the black and white spaces of the papers. The title of the show is a play on the meaning of marginalization. Margins are on the paper, as well as in the sociopolitical aspects of the work.

Tate Britain will have a mid-career retrospective of Chris Ofili's work in Jan 2010.