Jan Fabre’s work of art will not be removed from the Pillar Room of the Flemish Parliament. This was decided by the Extended Bureau of the parliament on Monday. The Parliament’s Art Committee will, however, be instructed to ‘provide an explanation for the artwork and the artist’.
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After artist Jan Fabre was convicted last week for, among other things, violence, bullying and unwanted sexual behavior at work, the opposition party Vooruit urged the removal of Fabre’s artwork with the famous green scarabs in the Pillar Room of the Flemish Parliament.
‘Leaving the artwork hanging would send a strange signal to the many Flemish people and the many schoolchildren who come to visit parliament’, thought Vooruit.
The issue was discussed on Monday in the Extended Bureau of the Flemish Parliament. There was little enthusiasm among the other parties to remove the artwork in question. That is why the work is not removed. However, the Art Committee of the Flemish Parliament, the committee that also decides on the purchase of works, is asked to explain the work and the artist, for example by means of a picture or explanation by the guides during guided tours.
Vooruit agrees with that solution. ‘It is especially essential for us that someone like Jan Fabre doesn’t just get away with it, that people who see his work know what he has done wrong. We think that is important as recognition of the suffering that Fabre inflicted on all those women’, says party leader Hannelore Goeman in a response to Belgian.
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