No Woman No Cry is a painting created by Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili is a Turner Prize winning British painter best known for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage, particularly his incorporation of elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists, and is now based in Trinidad.-Early life:Ofilli was born in Manchester. He had a...

 in 1998. It was one of the works included in the exhibition which won him the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

 that year (the first painter to win the prize since Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin

Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CH, CBE is a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction.-Early life:...

 in 1985). The Financial Times has described it as "[h]is masterpiece".

The painting is in mixed media

Mixed media

Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...

, including acrylic paint

Acrylic paint

Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry...

, oil paint

Oil paint

Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...

, and polyester resin

Polyester resin

Polyester resins are unsaturated resins formed by the reaction of dibasic organic acids and polyhydric alcohols. Polyester resins are used in sheet moulding compound, bulk moulding compound and the toner of laser printers...

. Against a golden background, it depicts the portrait of a black woman with braided hair – sometimes described as a portrait of Doreen Lawrence

Doreen Lawrence

Doreen Lawrence OBE is a prominent British human rights campaigner dedicated to securing justice for the victims of racially motivated crime and police misconduct...

 – weeping. Each tear includes an collage

Collage

A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

d image of Stephen Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence was a black British teenager from Eltham, southeast London, who was stabbed to death while waiting for a bus on the evening of 22 April 1993....

, who was murdered in 1993. Barely visible in phosphorescent paint (but clearer in dark conditions) are the words "R.I.P. Stephen Lawrence 1974-1993".

The canvas

Canvas

Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...

 measures 243.8 centimetres (96 in) high by 182.8 centimetres (72 in) wide, and is displayed leaning against the gallery wall, supported by two dried, varnished lumps of elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

 dung. A third lump forms the pendant of the necklace. Map pins on the lower two lumps spell out the painting's title.

The painting is Ofili's tribute to Stephen Lawrence. Ofili was inspired by the dignity of Stephen's mother, Doreen Lawrence, in the face of her personal tragedy. He also intends it to be seen as a more general portrayal of melancholy and grief. The Financial Times has described it as "a modern Pietà

Pietà

The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture. As such, it is a particular form of the Lamentation of Christ, a scene from the Passion of Christ found in cycles of the Life of Christ...

". It takes its name from Bob Marley

Bob Marley

Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...

's reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

 song, "No Woman, No Cry

No Woman, No Cry

"No Woman, No Cry" is a reggae song by Bob Marley & The Wailers. The song first became known in 1974 through the studio album Natty Dread. The live version from the 1975 album Live! is perhaps best known — it was this version which was released on the greatest hits compilation Legend. The original...

".

The painting was purchased by the Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

 in 1999. It was included in a mid-career retrospective

Retrospective

Retrospective generally means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. For example, the term is used in medicine, describing a look back at a patient's medical history or lifestyle.-Music:...

 of Ofili's work at Tate Britain

Tate Britain

Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...

 in 2010, and selected by the Tate as its initial painting to have a high-resolution gigapixel image included in the Google Art Project

Google Art Project

Google Art Project is an online compilation of high-resolution images of artworks from galleries worldwide, as well as a virtual tour of the galleries in which they are housed...

, together with an image taken in the dark to highlight the phosphorescent paint.