Chris Ofili " No Woman , No cry " 1998
On Thursday 18 of April 1998 a young black man , only 18 years old by that time , by name of Stephen Lawrence was attacked on a street by six man because of his race, he got stabbed multiple time and did not survive the attack.He was a bright man, with a family which deeply loved him and dreamed of becoming an architect one day. Because of institutional racism and luck of care from the police department this case was not investigated properly and went cold.
Nevertheless the mother of Stephen Lawrence - Doreen kept fighting for the justice for her son. Many people supported her case - one of them was Nelson Mandela. Unfortunate luck of investigation in Stephen Lawrence murder was one of the many incidents of the system treating black people, and people of colour different than whites. ( which still happens now days , we can remember about racial profiling in USA, many racial motivated attacks in Russia during 200th, case of George Floyd and many more). With involvement of Nelson Mandela and many other activists and people from different fields of life a lot of attention was drawn to the case and the police had to make the arrests.Only to release the suspects shortly after that.. claiming they didn't have enough evidence to prosecute them.
Violent death of a child, getting no justice - all of that is unbearable for any mother to go through. As many people Chris Ofili was drawn to this case. Having seen Doreen go through hell he was amazed by the dignity with which she was handling herself despite going through grief and so much pain. It is Doreen Lawrence - " No woman No Cry " is painting dedicated to her and her son.
On a canvas we can see a portrait of Doreen. Her eyes are closed and we can see tears that dropping down on her shoulder. Inside the tears is the photographs of her son. Ofilli uses mix of collage and classical painting. Background of the canvas filled with art-opt ornaments. Around Doreen is yellow light - which make her look almost like saint from the medieval icons. Chris Ofilli was living in Africa.There he learned how to work with elephant dung as a material, he used it as well in this painting.
As a Black man himself Chris Ofili knew what racism is and how dangerous it can be. That's why in a lot of his work he celebrated and was inspired by the black ( modern or ancient) culture. ( one of his work : untitled, was featuring 30 portraits of black woman - to highlight the diversity of black identity).
For Chris Ofilli Doreen and her family wasn't just a statistic ( like it likely could be for some police officers/ judges and so on) but they were a real, close to home people he deeply cared about and the people about who he wanted to talk in his art - to give them all the voice they deserved.
