Marcelline Delbecq

Marcelline Delbecq is an artist-writer, translator, and PhD graduate of the SACRe program at ENS PSL. After studying photography, fine arts, and art criticism, her practice gradually moved away from material production to focus on the potential of narrative to create images. Her texts are recorded, read publicly, and published. She regularly collaborates with photographer Marina Gadonneix, choreographer Rémy Héritier, and musician Eric Chenaux. She has published Envolée (Fléchette, Sun/sun, 2023), Camera (Ugly Duckling Presse, New York, 2019), Oublier, voir (Fondation Cartier – Manuella éditions, 2015), and Silence trompeur (Manuella éditions, 2015).

At the Villa Medici, Marcelline Delbecq is continuing her fragmentary writing project, a “Subjective History of Reading,” drawing on both the Villa’s library and the Roman context to discover new sources—ancient and contemporary alike—following in the footsteps of Lire à Rome (Claire Salles, Les Belles Lettres, 2008). She plans to take part in a session of the literary circle “Leggere in Circolo,” organized by several municipal libraries, in order to carry out fieldwork and conduct interviews with readers living in present-day Rome—a city that is both ancestral and marked by the resurgence of fascism.