‘First and foremost, an artist must have the courage to engage with the material. The idea comes second. The political is always present but never dominant.’ (Jan Lauwers)
Time and time again, Jan Lauwers starts out from his métier as a visual artist to create a new image or story that ‘has both feet firmly planted in society’. Always highly topical, provocative in his questioning of form and content, he begins with the material in order to give shape to the elusive.
Like a sponge, he absorbs everything around him: ‘In the Velázquez room at the Prado I become Velázquez and understand all his problems. I am a chameleon. As an artist I am everyone.’ The blank canvas, the white page, plays a vital role. Out of nowhere, he interrogates the technique of painting with paint, the technique of writing with his pen, and the medium in itself with his theatre or opera work. He transposes questions posed by one art form to other art forms.
Authorship comes into its own within the illustrious artists’ house Needcompany, which he founded together with Grace Ellen Barkey in 1986. As a visual artist, he is fascinated by the elusive and transient nature of the performing arts. By placing authorship centre stage with Needcompany, work is created in which every medium is approached as independently as possible, in order to afford greater autonomy to the volatile medium that is theatre.
‘Theatre is all about collaboration,’ says Lauwers. His entire oeuvre is a quest for the creation of a comprehensive portrait of the person with whom he is currently collaborating. As a result, the character and the person who is bringing the character to life are equally important to Lauwers. He writes on the skin of the individual, whereby he tries to transcend the contemporary dogmas of diversity and identity. He places humanity at the centre of this. Failing, loving, struggling, and major and minor sorrows are always given a special place.
His work is described as post-dramatic, a term that he has redefined in recent years. The most important characteristics of his work are the transparent, ‘productive’ acting, the paradox between ‘acting’ and ‘performing’, ‘blank canvas’ thinking; and all of this supported by his ‘off-centre’ strategy.
His most high-profile performances such as ‘The Snakesong Trilogy’ (1994-1998), ‘Isabella’s Room’ (2004), ‘The blind poet’ (2015), and ‘All the good’, but also adaptations of texts such as ‘War and Turpentine’ (2017) by Stefan Hertmans, ‘Billy’s Violence’ (2021) and ‘Billy’s Joy’ (2023) by Victor Afung Lauwers have been performed at prestigious theatre houses and festivals including NEXT WAVE (Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York), Documenta X, Festival d’Avignon, Holland Festival and the Ruhrtriennale. From 2009 to 2014, Needcompany was artist-in-residence at the Burgtheater (Vienna). Alongside the groundbreaking theatre work with Needcompany, Lauwers has also built up a considerable oeuvre of visual work that was exhibited at BOZAR (Brussels) and McaM (Shanghai), among others. Lauwers was awarded the ‘Gold Honorary Badge for Merit for Services to the Republic of Austria’ (2012). In 2014 he was rewarded with the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Biennale. He was the first Belgian in the theatre category to win this prize. Since 2018 he has been collaborating on operas with partners including the Salzburger Festspiele and the Wiener Staatsoper.
Overview of productions
