Chris Ofili paints in a dilapidated white cottage on Lady Chancellor Road, about ten minutes from downtown Port of Spain, in Trinidad. It has three rooms, each large enough to accommodate one or two of the strange, dreamlike paintings he is working on. Aside from taking out the kitchen, Ofili has done nothing to the cottage. Rickety windows on one side are propped open with sticks. No air-conditioner, no screens, no studio assistant. The house clings to a steep hillside, the floor slants downhill, and the floorboards sag and groan. Most of the recent paintings in Ofili’s first major New York retrospective, which opens at the New Museum on October 29th, were done in these rooms.
“I think I just resolved something about this one,” he said, somewhat conspiratorially. It was…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, Oct-06-14