Jan Fabre is an artist, theatre-maker and author.
He was born in Antwerp in 1958.

In the late seventies he studied at the Royal
Academy of Fine Art and the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and Crafts in Antwerp. His first works date from that period. Jan Fabre makes installations, sculptures, drawings, films and performances. Over the years he has built up a sizeable body of work and has become internationally acclaimed.

His best-known works include Tivoli (1990, Mechelen), a mansion covered entirely in ballpoint drawing, The man who measures the clouds (1998), a bronze sculpture, versions of which can be seen at SMAK in Ghent, deSingel in Antwerp and in the sculpture garden at Catanzaro in Italy; and not least Heaven of Delight, a permanent work commissioned by Queen Paola of Belgium for the Mirror Hall at the Royal Palace in Brussels.


He has been part of several important international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennial (1984, 1990, 2003 and 2011), Documenta in Kassel (1987 and 1992), the Sao Paolo Biennial (1991), the Lyon Biennial (2000), the Valencia Biennial (2001) and the Istanbul Biennial (1992 and 2001). Fabre is to date the only contemporary artist to be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Parisian Louvre (2008, Angel of Metamorphosis). From the Cellar to the Attic. From the Feet to the Brain at Kunsthaus Bregenz (2008) and From the Feet to the Brain in Venice venue Arsenale Novissimo (2009) and in Kröller-Müller ‘Hortus/Corpus: Jan Fabre’ in Otterlo The Netherlands.