Leen De Graeve

Leen De Graeve is a Brussels-based artist who graduated from RITCS (Brussels) as a theatre director/writer and from the University of Antwerp as a theatre researcher. With the theatre company zie!duif she made the prizewinning performance Stockholm (Theater Aan Zee 2008). She has often worked in neighbourhoods known for their cultural mix, such as Molenbeek in Brussels and De Coninckplein in Antwerp. Based on meetings with local people, she creates intimate performances about constructing a dialogue. In Molenbeek she has developed several works, amongst others Living Expo (with Anna Rispoli, Christophe Meierhans and Oiseaux Sans Tête, supported by Maison des Cultures, de Vaartkapoen, Molenbeek 2014, Nederlandstalige Cultuurdienst 2014). With Chirine Karame and Mireia Chalamanch she undertook artistic research in Beirut, Barcelona, Brussels and Ostend for Cycle (Moussem Nomadisch Kunstencentrum, Pianofabriek Kunstenwerkplaats, Vrijstaat O, CRA’P 2014), a performance in public space about the cross-generational influence of war memories. She travelled to Barcelona, Cairo and Beirut with a dialogue-performance about gender (coaching by Lotte van den Berg, RITCS) in 2013. As a researcher she has mainly been involved in the area of gender and the arts (Kaaitheater 2014, Q-O2 2016). Gender is also a reccurring theme in the plays she writes (This place is looking for better men, Het Paleis 2015). Her short stories have been published in De Revisor (Amsterdam 2012) and Kluger Hans (Gent 2015).