Jan Fabre
(Antwerp,
1958 )
Jan Fabre is a multifaceted artist who questions the status of the body and ruthlessly exposes the inextricable link between beauty and impermanence. Even in his early performances he avoids extremes nor controversy: he carves into his body and draws with blood. From the 1980s, he gained international fame as a theater maker and as a visual artist. In bronze or marble, with blue bic or with the shields of millions of jewel beetles, Fabre creates a world populated with angels and warriors, skeletons, insects and other animals. Through all sorts of allegorical, metaphorical or mystical references, they touch on central themes such as desire and drift, decay, death and destruction. These also recur in the theater performances Fabre directs. In these performances, he searches for the animal in man through the human body - with blood, sweat and other bodily fluids.
