Fleur
Fleur is a performance artist, writer, speaker and LGBTQ+ advocate.
Her wife Julian died in 2018.
“I was married to a man for ten years. Then all of a sudden I fell in love with a girl.
In my work, I’d always searched for people with a different story: people of colour, queer people, women. But the moment I met Julian, it came much closer to home.
At one point Et Alors? - our magazine on queer art - reached 750,000 readers. We had a voice, and with that voice came responsibility. We asked ourselves, what more can we do?
Love and marriage builds bridges. So we decided to get married in the 22 countries where same-sex marriage was legal. It was a bit sneaky - yes, you’re celebrating the 22, but you’re also pointing at the 70 where it’s illegal. And the 11 where you can be sentenced to death.
We sold everything and left with one suitcase. We got married in New York, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Paris. Our inboxes exploded.
But after the wedding in Paris, Julian felt dizzy. We went to a doctor and she was diagnosed with multiple brain tumours. She died 6 weeks later.
I’d lost the love of my life. I’d lost my job. I had no house or belongings. I was left with the suitcase and 125 euros in my bank account.
I went into pure survival mode.
There’s that one story in children’s books: a big family, mother in the kitchen, father out working. But I’m a single child raised by a single mom who hated cooking. So instead, I drew myself as a doctor behind a big desk, then as an astronaut next to a planet. As soon as my mother trusted me with scissors, I started cutting things out of magazines and made collages.
As a teenager, I read all the beat generation writers: Ginsberg, Kerouac. I loved those stories. The only problem was, women were nowhere to be found. And if they were, they were hysterical or they were oversexed or they were weak. Those writers told me I had to shut up and do the dishes.
I never found my story in the books I read. So from a very young age, I created my own.
“My grief is still there.
I’m learning to live with it, navigate it. ”
There are so many versions of my life now.
You have the book Julian which contains my memories - but I don’t necessarily know that they’re the right memories. Maybe Julian would say “It didn’t happen like this.”
Then you have the movie version, where some things are made up. To make a movie from a book you have to add things, change things, leave some bits out.
I also wrote a children’s book for MoMA in New York about two women, Fleur and Julian, who get married. In that book, Julian doesn’t die.
There’s this alternative life - it twists things.
Sometimes I can’t grasp what the real story was. I have to sit and really think, what actually happened?
Everyone tells me their stories, but I’m really not ready for that. I guess it’s because I’ve shared mine and they haven’t had the chance.
They see it as an invitation. People don’t know what to do with their grief.
I’ve always written about female equality and LGBTQ+ rights. But now Julian has been translated into English, people are reducing me to that single story again.
I can’t wait for my next book to be translated so I can go beyond that - at least in work. I can’t stay in that feeling the book describes. Honestly, I can’t handle it. It’s unlivable, you know?
My grief is still there. I’m learning to live with it, navigate it.
But I’m going beyond that one story, just like I’ve always done. I’m making new work: children’s books; a third novel; I’m writing a queer opera.
Telling new stories is my way of moving on.”