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Preview image of work. One from a suite of 11 etchings with gravure on specially prepared and pigmented paper,  Black Shunga 30070

2016.3.4

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Black Shunga

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Artist

Chris Ofili (Manchester, England, 10/10/1968 - )

Title

Black Shunga

Creation Date

2008-2015

Century

early 21st century

Dimensions

26 1/2 x 17 1/2 in. (67.3 x 44.5 cm)

Object Type

print

Creation Place

Europe, United Kingdom

Medium and Support

One from a suite of 11 etchings with gravure on specially prepared and pigmented paper

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Barbara Cooney Porter Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2016.3.4

Chris Ofili’s Black Shunga portfolio raises questions about perception and visual resolution on literal and metaphorical levels. Challenging our sense of the familiar, the work’s layers of deep shades of blue on a silver-hued ground evoke what the artist describes as a “moonlike glow … not dark nor light, everything is reflecting back.” As our eyes slowly adjust, frolicking figures emerge, engaged in the intimate encounters suggested by the work’s title, an allusion to erotic nineteenth-century Japanese shunga prints. Just as Ofili’s prints grow out of a fusion of cultures, so too scenes of pleasure both combine with and emerge from the work’s surface in a gradual revelation akin to the joyful dawning of creative insight or inspiration.