Afrotranslinear

On entering the show, I must say I was a little disappointed. After discussing the YBA show in our class and the uproar his elephant dung images had caused, I was expecting something a little more, well, controversial. At first glance the show was bland and felt like an exhibition of work I had seen before. On a closer observation of the work, his line drawings of people were made up of tiny smiling Afro heads ranging in detail and size. The portraits on the walls were done very delicately, the intense colors forming tie-dye patterns and aiding in separating each individual from the others, creating what appears to be a sort of typography. The show carried an overt sense of humor from the titling of his images to the imagery presented.
The images that most struck me were from the series 7 Brides for 7 Bros whose title is borrowed from the musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The women in the piece are in actuality based on one woman, Ofili’s wife (her favorite musical happens to be Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), and are depicted in a highly sexualized, if not fetishized, manner. Again, the graphite drawings are made up of small Afro heads- not excluding her genitalia and pubic hair. Each individual drawing is titled after the lead male characters of the musical- it seems as if he has given up his wife to these unknown men.
The sexual content of the images seems out of place with the other, more considerately humorous, images in the show. However, if we consider the others as explorations of Black identity, these seem more an exploration of Black sexual identity, an aspect that cannot be neglected when considering an individual, much less an entire group. After circling the exhibition several times, I kept returning to these drawings. Perhaps it was the seeming displacement of the images that originally drew me to the series, but it was the consideration of their inclusion that kept me engaged.