Drawings

LA RÉINCARNATION DE SAINTE-ORLAN OU IMAGES NOUVELLES-IMAGES DITES OPÉRATIONS-CHIRURGICALES-PERFORMANCES, is a series of 9 performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels and New York. ORLAN created this series to derail surgery from its habits of enhancement and rejuvenation, and to perform surgical operations that weren’t supposed to bring beauty, but ugliness, monstrosity and indesirability. 

The central idea behind these surgical operations was to combat stereotypes and models. ORLAN is not against cosmetic surgery, but against what we do with it. She uses this technique to invent the self-love by attacking the mask of the innate. The first condition with the different surgeons was no pain, because ORLAN is all for BODY-PLEASURE. For each performance, ORLAN decorated the operating theatre, turning it into her artist’s studio. She and the rest of the medical staff were costumed by a renowned designer working in collaboration with the artist. The performances were orchestrated by readings, and when the surgical gesture allowed it, ORLAN produced images, films, videos, photos, drawings with her blood and fingers, reliquaries with her fat and flesh, “holy-suaries” of sorts made with her dried blood and medical gauze from the operation onto which she made photographic transfers, and objects subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

Among the medical team and the STUDIO ORLAN team, there was a woman specializing in sign language for the deaf and hard of hearing, and this character was there to remind us that we are all deaf and hard of hearing at certain times. His presence in the operating theatre was a display of body language. She was assisted by Raphaël Cuir, videographer Tom Klinkowstein, who handled the satellite transmission, Sophie Thompson, who took care of the English translation, and Connie Chung, the famous star broadcaster of the time, who asked to be in the operating room with ORLAN and did a full report on the CNN evening news at 8pm. She came to France to attend ORLAN’s wedding to Raphaël Cuir in Sologne. 

During this mythical operation, ORLAN had solid silicone implants placed on her cheekbones to enhance them on both sides of her forehead. The idea was to create an operation that wouldn’t bring beauty but, on the contrary, undesirability and monstrosity. ORLAN wanted to demonstrate that beauty is a dictate of the dominant ideology in a geographical and historical point in time. These bumps have become organs of seduction. ORLAN says “it’s my convertible”. 

Thanks to Christian Vanderborght, this performance was broadcast live via satellite to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Mac Luhan Centre in Toronto, the Banff Multimedia Centre, Canada, Belgium, Germany, Latvia, Japan, the Netherlands, New York, Santa Monica and in France to Nice and Lyon. Spectators from all over the world were able to watch the operation and ask questions, which ORLAN answered live as soon as the surgical procedure allowed. Participants in the satellite transmission at the Centre Georges Pompidou included Gladys Fabre, Jean-Paul Fargier, Christian Vanderborght and François Barré, President of the Centre, among others.

LA RÉINCARNATION DE SAINTE-ORLAN OU IMAGES NOUVELLES-IMAGES DITES OPÉRATIONS-CHIRURGICALES-PERFORMANCES, is a series of 9 performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels and New York. ORLAN created this series to derail surgery from its habits of enhancement and rejuvenation, and to perform surgical operations that weren’t supposed to bring beauty, but ugliness, monstrosity and indesirability. 

The central idea behind these surgical operations was to combat stereotypes and models. ORLAN is not against cosmetic surgery, but against what we do with it. She uses this technique to invent the self-love by attacking the mask of the innate. The first condition with the different surgeons was no pain, because ORLAN is all for BODY-PLEASURE. For each performance, ORLAN decorated the operating theatre, turning it into her artist’s studio. She and the rest of the medical staff were costumed by a renowned designer working in collaboration with the artist. The performances were orchestrated by readings, and when the surgical gesture allowed it, ORLAN produced images, films, videos, photos, drawings with her blood and fingers, reliquaries with her fat and flesh, “holy-suaries” of sorts made with her dried blood and medical gauze from the operation onto which she made photographic transfers, and objects subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.