William Shakespeare × Chris Ofili: Othello

Chris Ofili creates intricate, kaleidoscopic paintings and works on paper that deftly merge abstraction and figuration. Ofili rose to prominence in the 1990s for his complex and playful multi-layered paintings, which he bedecked with a signature blend of resin, glitter, collage, and, often, elephant dung. His recent works—vibrant, symbolic, and frequently mysterious—draw upon the lush landscapes and local traditions of the island of Trinidad, where he has lived since 2005. Employing a diverse range of aesthetic and cultural sources, including, among others, Zimbabwean cave paintings, blaxploitation films, Italian soccer player Mario Balotelli, and modernist painting, Ofili’s work investigates the intersection of passion, identity, and representation.Fred Moten is Professor of Performance Studies at New York University. He is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (2003); Hughson’s Tavern (2008), B. Jenkins (2009), The Feel Trio (2014), The Little Edges (2014), The Service Porch (2016), Black and Blur (consent not to be a single being) (2017), and co-author, with Stefano Harney, of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013).