Chris Ofili gained celebrity in the 90s for such bold and controversial works as No Woman, No Cry (his homage to murdered London teenager Stephen Lawrence) and his black Virgin Mary, featuring elephant dung and angels shaped from porn magazine clippings.

There is a huge variety and range in his work, but nearly all of it explores Black culture and Black experience. The artist draws on everything from political, biblical and cultural references to hip hop, jazz, exoticism and racism.

In 2005 he left London for Trinidad, where his art took a bold, new direction. He abandoned the things that had made him famous — the glitter, the dung, the dots of paint, for instance — in favour of simple, pared-down forms that are arguably harder to read. The Raising of Lazarus (2007), now held in the MoMa collection in New York, exemplifies this radical creative shift. ‘I liked the idea of having only paint and a surface,’ he told The Guardian in 2017. ‘And I think it is working for me.’

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