Laure Prouvost unveils vast Bruges fresco at new BRUSK museum
- maxwell museums
- May 31
- 3 min read
Turner-prize winning artist Laure Prouvost has unveiled a major new permanent artwork in the Belgian city of Bruges.
Prouvost has produced a vast four-part fresco for the central staircase of BRUSK, a new art gallery in the historic heart of Bruges and next to the famous Groeningemuseum.
The work — titled The Whispering Walls Rêve — spans a total of 350m², and takes visitors on a journey through the French artist’s artistic mind. It takes centerstage in the new museum’s airy and light-filled atrium that all visitors enter. So no ticket is required to see it.
It’s one of a number of highlights helping to launch BRUSK, which opened its doors on Friday 08 May 2026. Other highlights include a fascinating exhibition on Bruges’ medieval history that’s been curated by academic Peter Frankopan, and the debut exhibition in Belgium for AI artist Refik Anadol.
Laure Prouvost's first ever fresco
I spoke to Prouvost at the press opening of BRUSK, and asked how she first approached this major commission.
“It took me a while to figure out how I'm going to tackle it or how am I going to work with the space,” she told me. But she knew from the beginning she wanted it to be a fresco, making it the very first fresco she has created in her career.
Travel inspiration | A new photography museum opens in Rotterdam
“I think both Paul Robbrecht, the architect, and I were thinking it'd be really nice to work with that technique, but it's also a technique that is completely forgotten, that is really technical, [and] very hard to achieve, and especially on contemporary walls.”
Prouvost said that once they’d fully settled on fresco, she began the commission by going “around and look[ing] at all the frescoes that are already existing in the city.”
She also spoke extensively to the people of Bruges, such as “people who live nearby, neighbours, but also engaged communities.” These included "a city tour guide, a specialist in beguinages and women’s history, a hydrologist, a tree expert, and archaeologists.”
While the fresco was painted using traditional techniques, when you get up close to it you can see other materials added too — such as real mirrors, bas‑relief (moulds rising out the surface), glass birds, and even a piece of bronze that visitors are invited to touch so that it will change colour over time.
Trompe l'oeil and references to Prouvost's Folkestone bird
Prouvost — who won the Turner Prize in 2013, and represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2019 — told me she included these for a sense of Trompe l'oeil (the art of painting to create illusions). “Is it a tapestry? Is it painting? Is it oil? Is it fresco?...it's a lot of playing [with the visitor].”
Those visitors are able to ascend the two sculptural staircases in the atrium to get a closer look at the work to try and spot these different materials. And the games continue for anyone who wants to try and identify the many familiar references included in the artwork from both artistic and literary fiction, but also scenes from the city outside and its history.
There are even nods to her own previous artworks. One particularly caught my eye: the three-headed bird sculpture she created for the Folkestone Triennial in Kent in 2025, and which is now a permanent fixture in the town.
The fresco is a “gathering of images, gathering of beings, human and other than humans” Prouvost revealed to me. It’s a “moment in time within my practice, but also within a hybrid world.” The bird in both contexts represents “the hybridity of…the way we live and how we evolve.”
Recommended read | A landmark new book explores the history of printmaking
It took ten women — “a big female power team” — around four months to paint The Whispering Walls Rêve. It was “almost day and night” according to Prouvost.
But it’s now a permanent feature of the BRUSK gallery, and of the city itself.
She wants the fresco to be like those of ancient Rome, where these artworks were “a landscape to live with… not like a masterpiece where you hang and protect it in some ways, it was a place to live in.”
That's why she and the team hope the vast new work will be “a space to live with, and live in” for the people and visitors of Bruges.
Laure Prouvost – The Whispering Walls Rêve is open now at BRUSK in Bruges. Entry is free
