An art display made from real sausages has been eaten by gallery visitors.
A Belgian artist displayed the piece made entirely from droge worst, a traditional dry-cured sausage popular in Flanders, at the city's Biekorf centre.
Droge worst, the Dutch for "dry sausage", is a traditional air-dried, cured pork or beef sausage from the Netherlands, often spiced with cloves, nutmeg, and pepper.
The incident occurred at Sarah Vandeursen's show, Inventing Obsessions, where the project was displayed to members of the public.
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Ms Vandeursen said: "Quite a few of the sausages are already gone. Presumably, some visitors couldn’t help themselves.
She added: "I also never said it wasn’t allowed. In art, there are no rules.
"The point is that we feed the people. If not with the spirit, then with the stomach.
"I didn’t feel comfortable with the fact that there was a lot of food hanging there and that many people were suffering from hunger. As far as I’m concerned, people who are hungry are absolutely welcome to eat from it."
An art display made from real sausages has been eaten by gallery visitors
|Sarah Vandeursen/Instagram
The artist handcrafted the sausages herself at a local butcher's before incorporating them into various artistic pieces throughout the exhibition space.
The work attracting the most attention was constructed from hanging droge worst suspended in a free-standing doorway.
Another display transformed cured meat into candles, while one reimagined an old-school photograph, with sausages standing in for the pupils in the original image.
Some more displays showed the food incorporated into a stained-glass window.
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Droge worst, the Dutch for 'dry sausage', is a traditional air-dried, cured pork or beef sausage from the Netherlands, often spiced with cloves, nutmeg, and pepper
|GETTY
Speaking on the future of the exhibition, Ms Vandeursen said: "I am worried, though, about the people who will still be eating the sausages in the coming weeks. Because I don’t think the heat of the past few days is really conducive to the quality.
"I don’t know if that’s so healthy, to be honest."
Asked why she had chosen to transform the snack into art, Ms Vandeursen told the Telegraph: “Why not? I had been playing with the idea of making candles in the shape of dried sausages for a while.
"That idea grew a bit bigger and now there is an entire exhibition around it.
A Belgian artist displayed the piece made entirely from droge worst, a traditional dry-cured sausage popular in Flanders, at the city's Biekorf centre
|Sarah Vandeursen/Instagram
The artist added: "Dry sausage has played a pleasant role in my entire life. I used to be mainly an enthusiast, but eventually I let myself become obsessed with it for a year.”
"Being able to create with your hands is simply blissful,” she added after revealing she had made the sausages herself at a local butcher.
"From sawing a pig carcass in half and turning it into dry sausage, I was allowed to take the entire process into my own hands.
"I then incorporated those sausages into a fly screen made of dry sausages."
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