Marie In The Margins

A video installation highlighting England’s earliest known female adventure writer, Marie de France, and a forgotten workforce of twelfth-century female scribes & illustrators working alongside her, through three women working in the cultural sector in Hastings.

The performers, who share a building reflecting the medieval abbeys, explore their work spaces as sacred spaces. In each 10 minute film, the women explore female decision makers in Marie de France’s writing, stepping away from their working environment only in their imaginations. Adventures are found in expected and more radical use of their immediate environment, their furniture and work tools and in their creative thoughts.

The Marie in the Margins project was developed in 2022 to place an overlooked her-story in spaces related to male medieval workforce history. The work was hosted in various Sussex heritage sites including the Monk’s Common Room at English Heritage’s 1066 abbey and battleground in Battle as well as Bexhill Museum and Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

The work has been shown internationally at the International Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University and the International Courtly Literature Society conference at British Columbia University in Vancouver.

To host this installation, please email explorers@explorethearch.com