Orlan
Orlan is really doing something very important in a highly medicalised culture, which is to meditate on the purposes of medicine and also on the certain kinds of control that doctors might have to interfere with our bodies. She has forced us to meditate on what she’s doing; why she’s doing it; and on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. She’s not doing it to embrace pain or celebrate cosmetic surgery but to really test and challenge the boundaries of medical practice.
Professor Victoria Pitts
Professor Victoria Pitts
Orlan, the pioneering French performance artist, has been working since the sixties. She uses here body to express ideas about cosmetic engineering, smart drugs, advertising and conventions of representing female beauty. Orlan’s polemical programme is 'total self-transformation', to be 'revolting and revolutionary', to tackle taboos about the body 'through a conceptual bomb, into the polite, market-oriented art world'.
In a series of major surgical operations through the 1980s and '90s, she reshaped her features to fit computer representations of mythic icons, some based on Renaissance paintings such as the Mona Lisa and Botticelli's Venus.
In particular, her series called The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, performed in the early nineties, were presented as live performance art where she underwent 12 cosmetic surgery procedures using real, trained doctors and powerful local anaesthetics whilst reading books.
In a series of major surgical operations through the 1980s and '90s, she reshaped her features to fit computer representations of mythic icons, some based on Renaissance paintings such as the Mona Lisa and Botticelli's Venus.
In particular, her series called The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, performed in the early nineties, were presented as live performance art where she underwent 12 cosmetic surgery procedures using real, trained doctors and powerful local anaesthetics whilst reading books.
Performances
The Surgery Performances, New York, early nineties
The Surgery Performances, New York, early nineties