Victoria Miro is delighted to present Our Times: Hunters in pink shade lure butterflies into their griffin’s chain link lair, 2015–2026, a major new painting by Chris Ofili. Completed over the past decade, it is one of two related works that will debut at Art Basel 2026 in gallery presentations by Victoria Miro (Booth E9) and David Zwirner.
Our Times: Hunters in pink shade lure butterflies into their griffin’s chain link lair (2015–2026) has absorbed a decade’s worth of the artist’s experiences and energies in its gestation, along with the manifold influences of works and exhibitions made in the meantime. A richly condensed force field, it radiates with an open-ended poetic logic characterised by archetypal and irreducible dynamics – of inside and outside, freedom and constraint, self and other – which unfold as if propelled by the force of the painting’s own immanent momentum.
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‘“Painting is a kind of pursuit, a hunt,” he told me… “I think it’s more interesting when you can corral your subjects, instead of just going right to them. Enjoy and engage with the process – you want to keep going into the unknown, to the point where you don’t think about how long it’s going to take to get there.”’
– Chris Ofili talking with Calvin Tompkins, The New Yorker, 2014
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‘The long-legged hunters stalking this dreamlike work are connected to the stilt-walking Moko Jumbies of Trinidad Carnival… Ofili drew on their sweeping tassels and planetary headpieces in creating his huntsmen, whose headdresses evoke the gyroscopic movement of spheres in circular orbit…’
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The long-legged hunters stalking this dreamlike work are connected to the stilt-walking Moko Jumbies of Trinidad Carnival - the Yoruban word 'moko' denoting a god or ancestral guardian, and the Caribbean 'jumbie' a spirit. In 2026 the carnival band Iya The Golden Lineage performed The Golden Moko: Eyes of the Ancestors, summoning the Moko Jumbie as a cosmic 'dual bodied force of protection and power.'¹ Ofili drew on their sweeping tassels and planetary headpieces in creating his huntsmen, whose headdresses evoke the gyroscopic movement of spheres in circular orbit, spinning on axes that remain constant. Poised on the threshold of action, their drawn bow structuring the composition of this kaleidoscopic painting, they prepare to shoot another arrow at the Postman butterflies they have lured into their domain, temptingly extending the shadowy illusion of a flower while they themselves are veiled in butterfly camouflage – hunter and hunted intimately connected.
Palace of the Peacock, Moko Somõkõw, Trinidad, 2019. Photo by Maria Nunes -
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‘Their tightly chained griffin hovers expectantly in the multifaceted darkness of its lair, tongue extended in anticipation of butterflies…’
Their tightly chained griffin hovers expectantly in the multifaceted darkness of its lair, tongue extended in anticipation of butterflies. Separated from its sky-blue exterior by a garland comprising flowers and leaves as well as chains, this lair is a vortex of interiority, exerting a gravitational pull that destabilises narrative meaning. The Postman butterfly’s red patterns signal that it is poisonous – not safe perhaps even for mythical predators to eat – and whether Ofili’s winged messengers carried other warnings or tidings as they were intercepted by their shooters remains an open question.
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‘The painting has absorbed a decade’s worth of the artist’s experiences and energies in its gestation, along with the manifold influences of works and exhibitions made in the meantime.’
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Chain link, a see-through boundary that heightens awareness of what is off-limits, is a recurring motif in Ofili’s work, significantly in his 2017 exhibition Paradise Lost in which paintings were hung on the inside of a chain link fence, the viewer looking in from outside. In this work it is an organic, sensitive medium in which surface and depth interplay, a translucent veil of iridescent insect wing scales that seems to advance and recede beguilingly as the painting is looked at. In places it melts into jewel-like tears of early morning dew, or dripping nectar, which mingle with the droplets – vital fluid, or poison? – that the butterflies let fall.
[1] thegoldenmoko Instagram post, 14 February 2026
The related painting, Chris Ofili, Past Times: Narcissus and the silent stingray in the sky, 2016–2026, is on view with David Zwirner at Art Basel 2026 -
Art Basel
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About the artist
Portrait of Chris Ofili
Photo by Carlos Arias
