Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost gathers the first photographs Chris Ofili has published, sixty-seven black-and-white images of chain-link fences and palm fronds made across Trinidad, where the artist has lived since 2005.

Shot on a phone in what Ofili calls "pocket photography," the pictures follow wire fencing as it meets tropical light, tracing enclosure against openness across the island. The book takes its title from a 2017 exhibition of new paintings Ofili showed at David Zwirner in New York. That show explored similar themes of constraint and desire but did not include the photographs themselves. Joshua Jelly-Schapiro's essay instead reads the fences through Caribbean history, describing two kinds of cages Trinidadians build: one for birds, one around their own homes.

Ofili won the Turner Prize in 1998 and represented Britain at the 2003 Venice Biennale. He is best known for densely layered paintings that combine collage, glitter, resin, and elephant dung with African and diasporic imagery. Represented by David Zwirner since 2005, he has since shown the tapestry The Caged Bird's Song at the National Gallery, London, a mural at Tate Britain, and work in the Hayward Gallery's In the Black Fantastic.