Five female icons of the Belgian art world: Miet Warlop

31 July 2025

Belga English paints the portraits of five renowned female artists from Belgium – in words. Today we look at Miet Warlop, who for more than two decades has been creating powerful visual experiences full of energy, humour and organised chaos. She will represent Belgium at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Being chosen to represent Belgium at next year’s Venice Biennale is the crowning achievement of Miet Warlop’s career, and it’s all the more special because she is the first performance artist to accomplish this feat.

In a career that has already spanned more than two decades, the Brussels-based artist has created dozens of shows, performances, exhibitions and scenography projects, which tend to overlap. Her pieces, packed with energy and humour, generally end with an introduction to the one that’s coming next.

“It’s a great recognition to receive this place within the context of visual art,” she told BRUZZ, talking about her selection for the Venice Biennale.

“Because I have never been a director or a choreographer. My performances have always been based on objects, materials or installations, around which I create a performative dynamic. That is the essence of what I do as an artist.”

In Venice, Warlop will present her new piece, It Never SSST, which explores themes such as performance pressure in modern society, language and rituals. It will be interactive: visitors will be drawn into its rhythm.

“The chaotic state of the world today is very palpably reflected in the high rock ‘n’ roll content of this performance,” the selection jury said.

Performance artist to represent Belgium at Venice Biennale for first time

Belgian artist Miet Warlop and curator Caroline Dumalin have been selected to represent Belgium at the 2026 Venice Biennale with their performance...

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The expectations around Warlop’s creations have been high for some time, especially since the global success of One Song, which premiered at the Avignon Festival in 2022 and was named one of the three best performances of that year by the New York Times.

One Song is a mix of sports match and up-tempo concert consisting of a single repetitive song, composed by Warlop’s life partner, musician Maarten Van Cauwenberghe. The performers can only produce sounds when they’re running, jumping, doing sit-ups or balancing on the gymnastics beam.

"The chaotic state of the world today is very palpably reflected in the high rock ‘n’ roll content of this performance"

They are alternately encouraged and booed by fans, until they collapse from exhaustion. The New York Times called the piece “loud, preposterous and extremely entertaining — if a little troubling”.

^{Trailer for Inhale Delirium Exhale}

For the piece, Warlop built on a performance from the very beginning of her career, when she and her friends created a requiem for her brother, who took his own life in 2004. That piece, Sportband, Afgetrainde Klanken, was a performance concert staged as an exhausting battle between sporting musicians and a small cheering public.

At the time of the loss of her brother, Warlop – born in Torhout, West Flanders – had recently graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent and had just won a prize for her graduation project, Huilend Hert, Aangeschoten Wild, an inhabited installation consisting of six tableaux vivants and a crawling subject.

“Things started for me when I lost everything,” she told De Tijd.” You’re at the beginning of something and suddenly you have to deal with something that you’re not old enough to know how to deal with.”

Warlop’s big breakthrough came in 2009, with Springville, a 50-minute moving game of chaos, expectation and surprise in which scenography, costumes, props and characters are closely interwoven. She subsequently moved to Berlin to concentrate on a new creation, Mystery Magnet, in which six performers develop an enormous painting-installation.

"My performances have always been based on objects, materials or installations, around which I create a performative dynamic"

A few years later, she surprised audiences with Dragging The Bone, wherein sculptures of plaster and wax are built on stage by an athletic, frenzied individual played by herself.

She moved to Brussels, where she set up her own organisation, Irene Wool, in Molenbeek. A collaboration with a group of musicians followed, leading to the piece Fruits of Labor, after which she turned to youth theatre with the performance Big Bears Cry Too – about a bear that falls victim to its own excessive cuteness and other fascinating creatures.

In May this year, at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Warlop presented Inhale Delirium Exhale, an immersive experience that transforms the stage into a living, breathing force of nature as 6,500m of silk ripple across the stage.

The pulsing soundtrack was made by DEEWEE, the label of Belgian brothers Stephen and David Dewaele, known from the bands Soulwax and 2manydjs. DEEWEE will also create the music that will draw in the visitors to It Never SSST in Venice.

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