"My body, my blood, my landscape"

Friday April 18, 2008 in Paris
Jan Fabre @ Le Louvre

Scratch any avant-garde artist, says Fabre, and you will find a scholar of tradition. "I saw these paintings with these agonised faces of Christ and bleeding stigmata," he says. "For me it was such an experience, mentally and physically, that when I did my first solo performance a year later — My Body, My Blood, My Landscape — I decided to do drawings with my own blood. And in all the years since, the theme of blood in my work always comes back.",/p>

For that first performance, Fabre drew his own blood with a knife. It was surprisingly easy. “Because there is a kind of curiosity. And it is also true that I studied anatomy, so I knew where I could cut myself without really hurting myself. I used all the stigmata of Christ. I used my fingertips to make the drawings.

"My experience was that I almost became one with the work I was creating, one with the material. My body became an instrument to make art. My soul was a part of the work. Because writing with blood is almost writing with your own soul."