Diane's night
The Diana cabinet is designed as a tribute to the patron goddess of the hunt. Covered in green silk velvet, it was designed as a jewel box. In connection with the two paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Bruegel, the Antwerp artist Jan Fabre imagined the strange ceiling. His installation assembles six owl heads (feathers of ducks, pheasants and partridges) fitted with prosthetic human eyes. For the artist, also a writer and director, the owl - a nocturnal bird - is an attribute of Diana: the goddess is indeed associated with the night, as recalled by the crescent moon she wears on her forehead.
But these figures also refer, according to him, to the "passage from life to death". An artist of the ephemeral, trained at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Jan Fabre became attached to the theme of nature very early on. He created several versions of this work: one was exhibited in 2008 at the Louvre Museum, another is on permanent display at the Museum of Flanders (Kassel). Jan Fabre's work shows his fascination for insects or taxidermy and is similar to contemporary vanities.
