You only need to look at her. With her black and white hair —styled in a similar fashion to that of Marge Simpson or Frankenstein’s Bride—, horn-like protrusions in her forehead, and colorful outfits, ORLAN definitely stands out, and she loves it. The French artist, born Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte in Saint-Etienne, is a jack of all trades and master of all. Be it through sculpture, photograph, performance, videos, videogames, or augmented reality, for over 40 years, ORLAN has found ways to produce powerful art pieces that have been exhibited in respected museums, such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Her constant reinvention and vision has turned her into a universally famous artist, yet it was in the 1990s that she produced her most recognized body of work.
It all started with an ectopic pregnancy —that is, when the embryo attaches somewhere outside the fetus and needs to be removed surgically—, which sent her to the hospital for an emergency surgery in 1979. ORLAN decided to remain conscious throughout the procedure and instructed a crew to film it, as she was fascinated with the ritual that surrounds medicine and how it resembles a Catholic mass. After it was over, she decided to incorporate surgery into her art, an idea she would develop from 1990 to 1995.
ORLAN staged a total of nine performances that utilized plastic surgery as mediums of artistic expression and became the first artist to do it. She altered her face –chin, forehead, mouth– and added protrusions to her forehead. Although it’s often said that she wanted the facial features of women from classic paintings, she denied these intentions in an interview with The Guardian in 2016. “All my work is against the standard of beauty,” she explained. To her, the entire point was to create an image that clashes with the strict standards set by society dictating what women should look like. In 2009, in another interview with the same newspaper, she described how she alters her body so what might sound monstrous when described can be far more relatable and even attractive when encountered face to face, despite its surgical enhancements.
The artist was awake during the entire procedures, the pain held in check through the use of morphine, and she read philosophy while the doctors cut her skin. Everything was filmed and transmitted to art galleries around the world. The doctors and the artist practiced many times before the performance to make sure it was feasible and safe. That’s one of the reasons why ORLAN distances her style of art (carnal art, of which she is the founder) from “body art,” which is a type of performance that sometimes aims to take artists’ bodies to the limit of endurance and pain. Marina Abramovic is a great example of it: she once staged a performance where she danced until she collapsed from exhaustion. Although it might seem paradoxical, ORLAN has said she did not put take her body to physical extremes. Her focus is not set on pain, but in pleasure. Her Carnal Art Manifesto states:
“Carnal Art does not conceive of pain as redemptive or as a source of purification. Carnal Art is not interested in the plastic-surgery result, but in the process of surgery, the spectacle and discourse of the modified body which has become the place of a public debate.”
ORLAN continues to succeed in her intentions as an artist, as she has generated debate around the topic of beauty and alterations to the body. Her powerful work is a strong reminder of the ridiculous standards we are subjected to by our societies. Like she stated in an interview with the Huffington Post in 2013: “Our time hates flesh and urges us towards anorexia, while we have all eternity to be skeletal.”
You might also be interested in these 15 influential transgender artists and 5 artists that were abused during their performances.
