Jan Fabre

(Belgian, born 1958)

Jan Fabre is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist known for his performances, sculpture, theater design, and drawings. His works include burning cash and writing the word “money” with its ashes, sculptures depicting brains with religious iconography, and Bic pen drawings. Born in 1958 in Antwerp, Belgium, he studied at the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Fabre can be seen as controversial figure; he was especially shamed for filming cats being thrown into the air upon the steps of the Antwerp town hall in 2002. Animal rights activists were horrified and the artist has since been physically attacked, and even had complaints launched against him by the Global Action in the Interests of Animals. Today, his works are in the collections of the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, and the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, among others. Fabre works and lives in Antwerp, Belgium.