Berlinde De Bruyckere’s Devotional Objects

A few months ago at a gallery dinner, I asked a German collector about the last work of art that had wowed him. He breathlessly described seeing Berlinde De Bruyckere’s installation of donkeys at the San Giorgio Maggiore church in Venice. It was only later I realized I’d misheard him, mistaking the German word Engel (angel) for Esel (donkey). To distract myself from my own embarrassment, I decided that my imagined installation was better. Celebrating the humble donkey – key to Jesus's story but rarely celebrated in sacred art – would have been subversive: Angels in a church? A kitschy mess. 

In ‘Khorós’, a survey of De Bruyckere’s work at Bozar in Brussels, religious imagery – and animals – abound. One of the angels, Archangel III (San Giorgio) (2023–24), is back, looming over exhibition-goers from a pedestal of ancient planks. He is surrounded by a series of wall-based wood and glass vitrines filled with cast-wax body parts displayed like holy relics (Need I-IV, 2023–24). De Bruyckere has said in various interviews that she’s interested in what happens when the divine enters the secular and, in the hush of the exhibition space, these works take on the aura of devotional objects. 

Historically, art in churches served both as a visual aid to teach the word of the Lord to the illiterate masses and as a means to inspire awe. Walking through the 11 rooms of De Bruckyere’s exhibition, which feature works from 1992 to the present, I am frequently awestruck. It’s hard not to be impressed by the monumentality of City of Refuge II and III (2023–24) – enormous, felled trees cast in wax – or by the skill displayed in Into One – another I, to P.P.P (2010–11), a wax and epoxy sculpture of a woman so lifelike that I found myself comparing with incredulity the blue veins in my arm to those in her feet. 

Many of the figures in ‘Khorós’ are sightless. The face of De Bruyckere’s archangel is covered by his robes, while Into One … and Invisible beauty (2011) are both headless bodies. A taxidermized horse and foal are presented minus innards and eyes, served up like fish at a restaurant (Lost I, 2006, and Lost V, 2021–22). In the Bible, blindness represents spiritual ignorance. Here, however, it seems to protect these figures’ purity: they cannot see what has been done to them – the unnatural way their limbs hang or are splayed in coffin-like vitrines – but we can. 

After visiting the exhibition, I met a Belgian critic who complained that De Bruyckere glamourizes suffering. That might be true, but the Catholic in me shrugs. Christianity is a religion premised on the idea that being brutally murdered – by fire, crucifixion or arrow – is saintly. If anything, ‘Khorós’ reminded me that, while formal expression has changed, so much of Western art, from Mark Rothko to Chris Burden, still draws on this belief. Perhaps the only difference is how open De Bruyckere is about her Biblical inspirations (several old-master paintings and religious objects are shown ‘in dialogue’ with her works) and the reverence with which she approaches these themes. 

Despite their size, there is a humbleness to these sculptures. The 2018 series ‘Courtyard Tales’ – wall-hung pieces in which the artist layers storied, vintage blankets to striking effect – reminds me of the monumentality and materiality of an Anselm Kiefer painting. Here, however, Kiefer’s recurrent motif of wartime violence is replaced with objects that speak to acts of care: the swaddling of an infant, say, or the wrapping of a recently deceased family member. What prevents these works – and the exhibition writ large – from tipping into sentimentality is De Bruyckere’s sincerity, which demands that the viewer respond in kind.

Berlinde De Bruyckere’s ‘Khorós’ is on view at Bozar, Brussels until 31 August 

^{Main image: Berlinde De Bruyckere, Plunder I (detail), 2024–25, work in progress. Courtesy the artist; photograph: Mirjam Devriendt}