Herculine Barbin

Marleen received a grant to develop Herculine Barbin. Herculine Barbin's memoirs are the starting point. The memoirs written in Paris in the 19th century and found and published over a century later by Michel Foucault. Because of the contrast between Barbin's personal quest and Foucault's scientific interpretation, the book is the symbol of the gap between the intersex community and the medical world present today.

“There are many more intersex stories that need to be told, from now, and from the past. With Herculine Barbin, I want to bring a piece of history that belongs in our collective memory. How is it that we have repressed shared knowledge for 200 years? 200 years ago it existed, now we break the silence, what happened in the meantime?”

Marleen graduated from the Theatre Teacher Short program at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. As part of her graduation she created the solo X Y I and the group performance X Y WE, about her and her players' intersex experience. With these she performed more than a hundred times in theaters, at festivals, as well as in hospitals and schools. She won the AHK Eindwerk publieksprijs and performed with X Y WE in ITA during the Lieve Stad festival. Marleen places her work in a social artistic context and her work is characterized by being visual, stylized and in motion.