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Dung Mary
by William Wetmore
The Holy
Virgin Mary,” Chris Ofili’s work of oil on linen with
glitter, polyester resin and elephant dung, which premiered at
the Brooklyn Museum of Art on October 2nd, should leave viewers
without the advertised sensations of nausea nor rage, but rather
with the heavy impatience one inevitably feels upon encountering
the aggravatingly trite and embarrassingly unimaginative. The
work showcases an African Mary with exaggerated features and
elephant dung encrusted on her breast. She is set on a yellow
background featuring floating female buttocks nipped from porno
mags. Supposedly exploring connections between his African roots
(Nigerian) and his European religion (Ofili, a former altar boy,
is said to still be a practicing Catholic), Ofili creates an
image of an African woman in the blue symbolically divine robe of
the Virgin Mary that gives way to a leaf like pattern towards its
bottom. This may suggest coherence between Christianity and
African “nature” based religions. The added
gimmick of the elephant dung on Mary’s breast obviously
furthers such gropings for significance in this otherwise
visually dull and technically unspectacular piece.
One thing though: What’s with the pornographic asses? If
Ofili means for the viewer to consider religious comparisons and
to hopefully move beyond racial prejudices possibly motivated by
religious differences, then why tack on pornographic asses? Well,
one could claim another level of meaning, perhaps a commentary on
Divine Conception or controversy surrounding Mary’s
sexuality or portrayals of graphic sexuality juxtaposed next to
the Virgin, or Freud or whatever. However, any such attempts to
add further significance to such a work is pathetically laughable.
For me, the elephant dung and the entire concept of the piece is
simply a juvenile attempt to add controversy and thus attention (and
thus Money Money Money!) to a clearly inferior talent. MR
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