In his 'Fragments d'un discours d'amoureux', Roland Barthes asked 'Who is going to write the history of tears?' In 'Histoire des larmes', Jan Fabre is taking up this challenge. An undiminished fascination for the potential and significance of the human body has run like a thread through his performances since the eighties. He examines and disentangles the many cultural and historical layers that define our image of the body. In 2001, in 'Je suis sang', Fabre focused on bodily fluids and took a close look at the inside of the body. In 'Histoire des larmes' he extends this study. With his unbridled imagination and deep admiration and veneration for Flemish painting, this wizard here works on an iconography of tears, the embodiment of a wide range of emotions. In 'Histoire des larmes', Jan Fabre once again consistently and dauntlessly shifts the boundaries of his extraordinary oeuvre with its central theme of metamorphosis.