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The Haunting Beauty of Berlinde de Bruyckere’s Work Gets Under Your Skin

From the moment you see her sculptures, it’s clear: this is not merely something to look at, but something to feel. For over thirty years, the Ghent-based artist Berlinde De Bruyckere has been developing a searching oeuvre in which bodies—animal, human, battered, tranquil—speak the language of pain, tenderness and survival. In a major solo exhibition at Bozar in Brussels, De Bruyckere once again shows how vulnerability can become a form of strength.

The man entering the small antechamber that precedes the exhibition lets out a cry. He apologises, gesturing towards the suspended horse, hoisted by one leg onto a gallows. “Berlinde De Bruyckere,” I offer, somewhat sheepishly. The man nods.

Anyone encountering it for the first time is struck. The dead horse has been a motif in De Bruyckere’s work for some twenty-five years now. Sometimes the anatomy is obscured, but references to the horse—mane, hair—persist.

It all began with a commission from the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. In the summer of 2000, De Bruyckere created an installation featuring five dead horses. Inspired by photographs from the First World War, she used these graceful, noble animals to symbolise the suffering of defenceless beings. The horses’ bodies were modelled as if entangled in dramatic, mortal combat, and the forms were draped in soft horsehide.

In 2012, De Bruyckere adopted an anthropomorphic approach. In an Istanbul hammam, she exhibited One: two horses whose bodies appeared fused, their necks and heads absent. With this, she sought to evoke the social function of the hammam, where people gather to cleanse and be cleansed. “It was impossible for me to translate that into the human body—then you end up with a one-to-one interpretation, and that didn’t work for me,” she explained in an interview.

At Bozar, a foal lies on a marble tabletop (Lost V, 2021–2022), rendered with striking realism. The young animal rests on a worn blanket, faintly echoing the Agnus Dei by the Spanish Baroque painter Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664).

Butchery

After 2000, horses only appeared sporadically in De Bruyckere’s studio. This is characteristic of her method: not a linear progression, but something more like a tree, with the work continually branching and re-branching. These offshoots have yielded metaphorical images that convey horror and beauty, suffering and sanctuary, injury and healing, as well as connection. Her materials have ranged from wax, wool, cloth, hair and twigs to metal, polyester, marble—and more recently, linoleum.

De Bruyckere’s artistic journey began with a childhood fascination for images. Raised in a working-class neighbourhood in Ghent, where her parents ran a butcher’s shop, she collected stickers for Artis-Historia art history books. This sparked an interest in art that led her, at sixteen, to exchange life as a boarder at a convent for an arts education at the Sint-Lucas School of Arts. She graduated in 1986 from the “monumental arts” department and soon combined her early artistic practice with teaching. Recognition followed in 1989 with the Young Belgian Artist Prize.

De Bruyckere’s early use of galvanised cages was sometimes mistaken for minimalism. But to her, they were figurative, metaphorical—concerning the loss of freedom. She did, however, admit to admiring Donald Judd (1928–1994), a leading figure in American Minimalism.

Blankets

Thematically, there was continuity with later works in which woollen blankets played a central role. With their familiar patterns, these blankets represent a contradiction: they offer warmth and comfort, yet they can also suffocate and obscure the wearer. The works allude to themes of flight, of leaving everything behind.

The House of Blankets (1993), a metal cage draped with blankets, marked a transition. One corner of the cage was left uncovered, but the structure appeared inaccessible, offering only the illusion of shelter.

In 1995, at the Openluchtmuseum Middelheim (Middelheim Museum), De Bruyckere exhibited several larger-than-life female polyester figures burdened with blankets. Their faces were obscured. In the exhibition catalogue, Maaretta Jaukkuri of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki described the work as “female art.” Would he have applied the same label to the dead horses and distorted wax wounds that would follow?

After the Blanket Women came sculptures that concealed themselves behind long hair. Later, once horses had entered her imagery, these gave way to the Men of Pain: distorted, suffering bodies hanging from poles or perched uncomfortably on high stools. The wax sculptures were named after Man of Pain, a depiction of Christ displaying his wounds, by the German painter Lucas Cranach (1472–1553).

Naked suffering bodies

In 2012, De Bruyckere brought her Men of Pain into dialogue with works by Cranach and the filmed images of Pier Paolo Pasolini in Halle (Germany) and Bern (Switzerland). It is no coincidence that these artists appear alongside her at Bozar. Here, Cranach’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist is displayed. De Bruyckere is particularly drawn to the sharp contrast between the horror of the severed head and the serene beauty of the impassive Salome in her sumptuous robes. Pasolini’s films, too, are steeped in painterly imagery. In Into One-another I, to P.P.P. (2010–2011), De Bruyckere pays homage to the filmmaker with a sculpture of two intertwined bodies, locked in a symbiotic struggle.

Cranach’s rendering of translucent, pale skin also inspired De Bruyckere. She honed her technique by creating nude figures in wax, achieving a similar effect. She painted successive layers of wax into a silicone mould; being warm, the layers merged. With over fifteen layers of colour, the surface took on a texture akin to luminous, translucent skin.

De Bruyckere has also applied her wax technique to non-human forms—most notably in Cripplewood, a monumental tree construction presented at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Set against the dark walls of the Belgian Pavilion and lit from the dome above, the fallen tree—propped up with cushions and bandaged as if to encourage new growth—suggested an all-encompassing empathy, extending to every living thing. At the same time, it referenced the iconography of Saint Sebastian bound to a tree, blending beauty, eroticism and mystical suffering. There is also a literary bridge here, to the work of South African-Australian author J.M. Coetzee.

De Bruyckere’s and her team’s ongoing engagement with wax figures and trees did not mark the end of her blanket work. On the contrary: in 2018, she expanded the metaphorical potential of wool with Courtyard Tales. The blankets were placed outdoors in the courtyard and orchard of her studio for several months, where they became matted, mouldy, discoloured—deprived of function and identity. From them she created a new series of compositions, some of which are now on view at Bozar. For De Bruyckere, the degraded state of the blankets reflects the condition of social structures that fail to support the most vulnerable.

Lust for life

Around 2019, another new offshoot appeared in De Bruyckere’s evolving oeuvre: her interpretation of the Enclosed Gardens. In the late Middle Ages, religious women created private devotional cabinets—verdant altarpieces filled with silk flowers, wooden figurines, medallions and relics. De Bruyckere echoes these in large, framed collages.

Together with the arrival of the angel figure in her work—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—these pieces illustrate her fascination with Catholicism’s historical tendency to sublimate suffering.

Yet a newer branch in De Bruyckere’s work is animated by Eros. During travels to India, she was struck by the lingam symbol used in Shiva worship. Devotees pour water or milk over a phallic form on a circular base, before sprinkling it with flowers. De Bruyckere placed her own phallic sculptures under glass bells—typically reserved for religious statuettes—thus juxtaposing the lingam’s sexual life force with Catholicism’s pious restraint.

At Bozar, these erotic sculptures are shown alongside drawings in which genitals merge with organic forms—fruit, wilting lilies. This underscores that De Bruyckere’s art resists Catholicism’s idealised suffering. In her work, it is the body that occupies centre stage, in all its transformations—be it lust for life or inevitable decline. Yet we cannot deny that, time and again, decline and suffering dominate her artistic landscape.

Berlinde de Bruyckere. Khorós, at Bozar, Brussels, until 31August 2025

• Berlinde De Bruyckere
• Bozar
• sculpture
• visual arts