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The artist creates self-hybridizations in homage to women in history whom she admires because they defended causes that ORLAN supports in her life and work. C he pioneering women who paved the way for other women took risks that sometimes cost them their lives. S oten forgotten, erased or under-represented, ORLAN brings them back into the limelight with this series. The artist, as usual, breaks down the ice walls between artistic practices, genres, eras and skin tones. C This act of blending with the other allows her, in a spirit of sisterhood, to bestow an artist’s kiss upon them and to bring women together despite the mists of time that separate them. E n reference to the great historical portraits, ORLAN prints these artists’ digital photomontages on canvas stretched and framed.

(Work in progess, other femmages are in production)

A Spanish artist who was orphaned—born to a mother who was a prostitute and heroin addict and who abandoned him at birth—he explores this void, this absence, in his work. Abel Azcona has created a new project in which he invites prominent women from the art world who have inspired him to participate in a series of duet photographs. They do not replace his mother but serve as guides—strong, empowering female role models. It is also a tribute to the mothers of performance art. Two generations come together: the historic artists and the new generation. Abel Azcona began this series in Amsterdam with Marina Abramović, and he is continuing it today in Paris with ORLAN.

For this event, ORLAN is creating “The Endangered African Forest Elephant and New Robots Made from Recycled Objects and Materials.” This work continues the artist’s exploration of endangered animals, with the unique twist that the elephant is a hybrid featuring the skin of a leopard and a lizard.

“Leather goods bring us back to the craftsmanship known as ‘la belle main,’ as well as to bags made of leather or animal hides (lizard, crocodile, etc.). Currently, we’re examining all the materials we use—whether natural or synthetic—as well as their carbon footprint. My work explores the disappearance of certain animals and birds. I depict these animals—which I hybridize with other animals—in their natural habitats, surrounded by robots. The robots are made from recycled materials. They are there to question new technologies that can either destroy or build a more responsible world.” ORLAN

In these photos, ORLAN has recreated the materials and textures used by these unknown artists, who inspired him in his creative process. These are mutating bodies emerging from the earth, stone, and jade; many are green, while others are red, symbolizing the importance of blood and the sun to the Maya. The yellow of corn, the brown of the earth, and the gray of stone are evident. There is a convergence of two forms of materiality—the tangible materials and the digital pixels that ORLAN employs and weaves into her works. The hybridization that most breaks free from Maya iconography is the one in jade: the anthropomorphic mask sticking out its tongue is the museum’s star attraction. ORLAN has inserted her eyes, tongue, and blue wig into it.
The predominantly male Maya statuary has been feminized through ORLAN’s face, and each portrait depicts a different age.

ORLAN decided to see what would happen if she did the same thing to the other half of humanity by reproducing the work—including its dimensions and frame—in the form of a photograph. In it, she features Jean-Christophe Bouvet, an actor who starred in *Sous le soleil de Satan* alongside Gérard Depardieu, with his average-sized penis in an erect state. ORLAN describes it as “the devil’s penis.”  

This feminist response questions the role of men and women in our society and how they are represented.

In 2022, in view of current events, ORLAN created a second version of “L’Origine de la guerre“, thirty years after the first, with a new model.

These robots, made from recycled materials and bearing ORLAN’s face, can be interpreted in two ways: we can see them both as destroyers and symbols of a dreaded future, or as protectors, standing by the animals’ side and guiding the last survivors of their species toward a reimagined future. Robots and new technologies challenge our understanding of the connection between the animal and human kingdoms. Just as much as these species left to their inexorable extinction, these robots are rebus images of modernity—made from obsolete, abandoned, and discarded objects that ORLAN recycles to give them new value and create with humor.

Part of the series is materialized in the form of luminous tapestries printed on fiber optics, powered by an LED track system. They have been produced using technology developed by brochier® technologies.

ORLAN creates jarring digital collages into which she inserts fragments of her face: her bulging eyes, her crossed eyes, her upside-down ear, and her screaming mouth baring teeth ready to bite—all to express anger through her work. It is a snapshot of this moment of realization. ORLAN does not put Pablo Picasso or Dora Maar on trial—for they can no longer defend themselves—but speaks out on behalf of today’s women who remain in the shadows: the inspirers, the models, the muses who played a pivotal role in the fame of our great masters. It is a call to emancipation. ORLAN tells them, “Stop being objects; become subjects. Emancipate yourselves; stop enduring; stop crying.”

ORLAN had his body scanned and then articulated so that he could perform all the acrobatics of the Peking Opera. With an artificial body, all distortions are conceivable; with a biological body, they are impossible.  

ORLAN has dressed her avatars and added tattoos that repeat the same motifs of hybridized photography. Each work of art has a different avatar, which comes out of the frame if you download the ARTI VIVE application and scan the work of art with it.  

You can then take photos of yourself, your friends and your avatar, and send them around the world just like any other selfie.

In his travel diaries, he paints the natives with respect, at a time when everyone considered them dirty, uncultured savages. He painted them in all their magnificence, in their ceremonial clothes, with their jewels and their superb feathers. ORLAN based her Self-hybridations amérindiennes series on these paintings and drawings. Of course, she transgressed their laws, as it was impossible for a woman to be a leader. ORLAN represents herself with jewelry forbidden to women, in particular that made from bear claws.

This series consists of a series of black and white photographs based on ethnographic photography, the first photos in which the Other is photographed. ORLAN also creates a few color works, as well as resin sculptures of mutant characters, notably exhibited at the 1999 Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art: “Partage d’exotismes”, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin.

In her series, ORLAN creates a manifesto work “Femme Surmas avec Labret et Visage de Femme Euro-Stéphanoise avec bigoudis” (Surmas Woman with Labret and Euro-Stephanoise Woman’s Face with Curlers), which demonstrates that beauty is merely a question of dominant ideology in a historical and geographical location. 

ORLAN presents a woman with a huge labret, very confident and sure of her ability to seduce, because in her tribe, the bigger the labret, the more desirable the woman. If we wore a labret here and now, in our Western culture, we would be designated by all as unbeatable monsters!

This series consists of a collection of black-and-white photographs based on ethnographic images—the earliest photographs in which people began to photograph “the Other.” ORLAN also created several color works as well as resin sculptures of mutant figures, which were notably exhibited at the 1999 Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art: “Partage d’exotismes,” curated by Jean-Hubert Martin.

In her series, ORLAN creates a manifesto work “Femme Surmas avec Labret et Visage de Femme Euro-Stéphanoise avec bigoudis” (Surmas Woman with Labret and Euro-Stephanoise Woman’s Face with Curlers), which demonstrates that beauty is merely a question of dominant ideology in a historical and geographical location. 

ORLAN presents a woman with a huge labret, very confident and sure of her ability to seduce, because in her tribe, the bigger the labret, the more desirable the woman. If we wore a labret here and now, in our Western culture, we would be designated by all as unbeatable monsters!

His trip to India was part of “le plan du film”, a series of works imagined from the reading of a quote by Jean-Luc Godard: “The only greatness of Jacques Becker’s Montparnasse 19 is that it is not only an upside-down film, but in a way the upside-down of cinema.” The concept was to take Godard literally, to create an upside-down film, starting with the poster and promotion with the trailer, letrilles, a soundtrack and a TV show to launch the feature. ORLAN enlisted the help of Publidécor, an advertising agency specializing in 1950s painted movie posters, to create fourteen painted posters based on photos of the artist and recycled works. Her intention with these hand-painted acrylic posters on 3 m x 2 m canvases was to tell the story of her life in art. ORLAN made the posters using the names of her friends in the art world at the time, and one or two names of movie stars to make it seem as if the film existed. She also staged a fake press conference with director Bigas Luna and curator Lorand Hegyi for a Valencia biennial. She invited a number of journalists to talk about a film she had made that didn’t really exist.

For her first series, the artist hybridizes with pre-Columbian cultures, with over thirty works, some inspired by the skull deformations found among pre-Columbians, Africans, Egyptians and Merovingians! The Vierge à l’Enfant (Virgin and Child) from Rabastens attests to this, showing both the Virgin and Child with a deformed, elongated skull.  

In her work, ORLAN has sought to break away from Western references and stereotypes of beauty, creating this first series using digital photography and interactive 3D video installations based on skull deformities, squinting, nose jobs known to the Mayas, Olmecs and Aztecs, and representations of the god Xipe Totec.

On others she poses with one or more multicolored ballets in dynamic gestures, and in the last she stages herself with post-operative bandages and false blues.

The installation of the work, inspired by Thomas McEvilley’s Art and Discontent-Theory at the Millenium, features a motion detector that triggers a recording of ORLAN repeating the phrase “Would you care for some content, Mr. Greenberg?”.

The “Exogène” exhibition, created by Bruno Guiganti and Morten Salling, took the form of a multi-part criminal investigation and identity quest. Works created by ORLAN using her own blood and flesh have been submitted to  the Danish forensic police for sequencing to verify whether they were created by the same artist. Sequencing analysis proved that they had indeed been produced by ORLAN. These works were a reliquary with flesh in the center and a St suaires soaked in ORLAN’s blood.

This fiction within a fiction spread throughout Copenhagen. Wanted posters featuring ORLAN were then put up all over the city, and a skull supposedly found by the art center was handed over to the criminal investigation department to find out if it might belong to her.

Traces of this investigation (works by ORLAN, fingerprints, DNA sequencing, wanted notices, skulls, etc.) were then exhibited in the desecrated Nikolaj Church, transformed into an art center.

THE REINCARNATION OF SAINT ORLAN OR NEW IMAGES-IMAGES The reincarnation of Saint ORLAN (alluding to the character who had gradually created herself by adopting religious images in her great series) Literature Review: Drapery, Baroque) or “new images” (a nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new tasks and achieve new feats). For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference, moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images”—that is, new technologies—known as “surgical-performance operations,” a series of nine performances carried out by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York. ORLAN created this series to subvert surgery’s conventional focus on enhancement and rejuvenation and to perform surgical procedures that were not intended to produce beauty but rather ugliness, monstrosity, and undesirability.  

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.

One could say, then, that this is a commissioned performance. In this proposal, she found a way to speak out loud and clear about how negatively she viewed artistic production in the 1980s. She therefore decided to create a performance that ran counter to—and served as a counterpoint to—what was happening in the contemporary art scene. In those years, most artists had become completely conformist and overly accommodating to market forces. ORLAN wanted to create a performance that built on her previous work—one that looked toward the future, radical in itself and transcending itself.  

It was while reading *La Robe* (which she would use as a motto for all her “surgical-performance” procedures) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, that the idea of this “passage à l’acte” crossed her mind. She thought that at that time they were beginning to have the means to bridge the gap between the internal image and the external image. She then said that she was engaging in “woman-to-woman transsexualism,” alluding to transsexuals: a man who feels like a woman wants others to see him as a woman (and vice versa). We could summarize this by saying that it is a communication problem. ORLAN creates a classic self-portrait, initially developed using a computer and then permanently inscribed on her flesh. She refers to this as “carnal art” to distinguish it from body art and questions the status of the body in society and its future in coming generations through new technologies and genetic manipulation.  

The artist’s body becomes a venue for public debate. 

On May 30, 1990, ORLAN’s birthday, in a deconsecrated church called “All Saints” in Newcastle, England, she announced, during an inaugural ritual performance, her decision to undertake the Surgical-Performance Operations by reading her “Carnal Art” manifesto, which she had written in 1989. 

The series has two titles: TheThe Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN (a reference to the character who gradually came into being by adopting religious imagery in his major series Documentary Study: The Drapery, The Baroque) or new images—images (A nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new tasks and achieve new feats. For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference—moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images”—that is, new technologies.) It consists of a series of nine performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York.  

In the very beginning, ORLAN created a self-portrait by mixing and blending, using a computer, images of goddesses from Greek mythology—chosen not for the beauty standards they are supposed to represent, but rather for their stories. 

Diane was chosen because she defies both gods and men, because she is assertive—even aggressive—and because she leads a group. The Mona Lisa as a flagship figure in art history, as a point of reference, because she is not beautiful by today’s standards of beauty, because there is something masculine beneath this woman. We now know that it is Leonardo da Vinci’s self-portrait that lies hidden beneath that of the Mona Lisa (which brings us back to a question of identity).  

ORLAN will say: 

“ So I don’t want to look like Botticelli’s Venus.

I don’t want to look like Gustave Moreau’s Europa (who isn’t my favorite painter). I chose this painter’s Europa because she appears in an unfinished painting—as do most of his paintings, for that matter!

I don’t want to look like Gérard’s Psyche.

I don’t want to look like Diane from the Fontainebleau School.

I don’t want to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa… as some newspapers and television shows have said and continue to say, despite my many contradictions and outbursts of anger. (The media coverage I can’t escape—whether in print or on TV—will be analyzed and understood in about ten years.) ”

For ORLAN, these depictions of female figures serve as a framework and a source of inspiration, and are symbolically far below them. Through this process of digital hybridization, she asked the surgeons to come as close as possible to this image.

In the three most recent surgical procedures performed in New York, ORLAN has broken free from conventional models by carrying out operations that were not intended to create beauty but rather ugliness and monstrosity. 

At first, finding a surgeon was difficult. After many rejections, ORLAN found one—a very cautious surgeon who started by taking small steps, which allowed her to understand what she was getting into and assess what she could manage to do in an operating room, what the limitations were—and her own limitations— understand how she reacted, how her body reacted, and thus learn to manage the entire surgical process better and better.  

ORLAN created this series to disrupt the cosmetic surgery industry’s focus on enhancement and rejuvenation. ORLAN is not against cosmetic surgery itself, but against what people do with it. She thus uses this technique to create a self-loving invention by challenging the mask of nature. The primary condition agreed upon with the various surgeons was that there be no pain, as ORLAN advocates for BODY-PLEASURE. 

Each procedure was conceived as a rite of passage. As a visual artist, ORLAN sought to challenge the cold, stereotypical aesthetics of surgery and transform them. For each performance, ORLAN decorated the operating room, which, through this act, became her artist’s studio. She and the entire medical staff were dressed by a renowned designer who collaborated with the artist. The performances were punctuated by readings, and whenever the surgical procedure allowed, ORLAN created images, made films, videos, photographs, and drawings using her blood and her fingers, reliquaries using her fat and flesh, a sort of “holy shroud” made from her dried blood and medical gauze from the surgery—onto which she made photographic transfers—and objects that were subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

ORLAN has captured the “in-between”, i.e. the exact image of the environment conceived from her face hybridized with a portrait of one of her art-historical reference figures, without retouching.

At the top, on the other side of the diptych, ORLAN used magnets to place the image of the day, a self-portrait made by the MACHINE-CORPS, of a face first with bandages, then with colors: from blue to yellow to red, the whole quite swollen. A metal plate was installed between these two images, engraved with the words: entre-deux and the day’s date.

By the last day, the installation was complete and so was the exhibition.

One could say, then, that this is a commissioned performance. In this proposal, she found a way to speak out loud and clear about how negatively she viewed artistic production in the 1980s. She therefore decided to stage a performance that went against the grain, serving as a counterpoint to what was happening in the contemporary art scene. In those years, most artists had become completely conformist and overly accommodating to market forces. ORLAN wanted to create a performance that built on her previous work—one that looked toward the future, radical in itself and transcending itself.  

It was while reading *La Robe* (which she would use as a motto for all her “surgical-performance” operations) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, that the idea of this “passage à l’acte” occurred to her. She thought that at that time they were beginning to have the means to bridge the gap between the internal image and the external image. She then said that she was engaging in “woman-to-woman transsexualism” in reference to transsexuals: a man who feels like a woman wants others to see him as a woman (and vice versa). We could summarize this by saying that it is a communication problem. ORLAN creates a classic self-portrait, initially developed using a computer and then permanently inscribed on her flesh. She refers to this as “carnal art” to distinguish it from body art and questions the status of the body in society and its future in coming generations through new technologies and genetic manipulation.  

The artist’s body becomes a venue for public debate. 

On May 30, 1990, ORLAN’s birthday, in a deconsecrated church called “All Saints” in Newcastle, England, she announced, during an inaugural ritual performance, her decision to undertake the Surgical-Performance Operations by reading her “Carnal Art” manifesto, which she had written in 1989. 

The series has two titles: TheThe Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN (a reference to the character who gradually came into being by adopting religious imagery in his major series Documentary Study: The Drapery, The Baroque) or new images—images (A nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new tasks and achieve new feats. For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference—moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images,” that is, new technologies.) It is a series of nine performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York.  

In the very beginning, ORLAN created a self-portrait by using a computer to blend and hybridize depictions of goddesses from Greek mythology—chosen not for the beauty standards they are supposed to represent, but rather for their stories. 

Diane was chosen because she defies both gods and men, because she is active—even aggressive—and because she leads a group. The Mona Lisa as a flagship figure in art history, as a point of reference, because she is not beautiful by today’s standards, because there is something masculine beneath this woman. We now know that it is Leonardo da Vinci’s own self-portrait that lies hidden beneath that of the Mona Lisa (which brings us back to a question of identity).  

ORLAN will say: 

“ So I don’t want to look like Botticelli’s Venus.

I don’t want to look like Gustave Moreau’s Europa (who isn’t my favorite painter). I chose this painter’s depiction of Europa because she appears in an unfinished painting—as do most of his paintings, for that matter!

I don’t want to look like Gérard’s Psyche.

I don’t want to look like Diane from the Fontainebleau School.

I don’t want to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa… as some newspapers and television shows have said and continue to say, despite my many contradictions and outbursts of anger. (The media coverage I can’t escape—whether in print or on television—will be analyzed and make sense in about ten years.) ”

For ORLAN, these depictions of female characters serve as a framework and a source of inspiration, and are symbolically far below them. Through this process of digital hybridization, she asked the surgeons to get as close as possible to this image.

In the three most recent surgical procedures performed in New York, ORLAN has broken free from conventional models by carrying out operations that were not intended to create beauty but rather ugliness and monstrosity. 

At first, finding a surgeon was difficult. After many rejections, ORLAN found one—a very cautious surgeon who started out taking small steps, which allowed her to understand what she was getting into and to assess what she could manage to do in an operating room, what the limitations were—and her own limitations— understand how she reacted, how her body reacted, and thus learn to manage the entire surgical process better and better.  

ORLAN created this series to disrupt the conventional practices of cosmetic surgery aimed at enhancement and rejuvenation. ORLAN is not opposed to cosmetic surgery itself, but rather to the way it is used. She thus uses this technique to create a form of self-love by challenging the notion of innate characteristics. The primary condition agreed upon with the various surgeons was that there be no pain, as ORLAN advocates for BODY-PLEASURE. 

Each procedure was conceived as a rite of passage. As a visual artist, ORLAN sought to challenge the cold, stereotypical aesthetics of surgery and transform them. For each ORLAN performance, she decorated the operating room, which, through this act, became her artist’s studio. She and the entire medical staff were dressed by a renowned designer who worked in collaboration with the artist. The performances were punctuated by readings, and whenever the surgical procedure allowed, ORLAN created images, made films, videos, photographs, and drawings using her blood and her fingers, reliquaries using her fat and flesh, a sort of “holy shroud” made from her dried blood and medical gauze from the surgery—onto which she made photographic transfers—and objects that were subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

During this procedure, ORLAN was operated on by feminist surgeon Dr. Marjorie Kramer and dressed by Issey Miyake. The photographers were Robert Puglisi and Vladimir Sichov for Sipa-Press (the photos are royalty-free).  

ORLAN decorates the operating room with a neon green fabric that matches the surgeon’s scrubs.

Among the medical team and the STUDIO ORLAN team was a woman who specialized in sign language for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and her presence served as a reminder that we are all, at certain times, deaf or hard-of-hearing. Her presence in the operating room highlighted the importance of body language.

There was also Raphaël Cuir as an assistant, videographer Tom Klinkowstein, who handled the satellite transmission, Sophie Thompson handled the English translation, and the famous star news anchor of the time, Connie Chung, who had asked to be in the operating room with ORLAN and produced a full report that aired on CNN’s 8 p.m. evening news. 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”.  

This performance was broadcast live via satellite thanks to Christian Vanderborght at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the MacLuhan Centre in Toronto, the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, in Belgium, Germany, Latvia, Japan, the Netherlands, New York, Santa Monica, and in France in Nice and Lyon. Clocks adorned the stage and displayed the time in the various cities where the performance was being broadcast.

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.

One could say, then, that this is a commissioned performance. In this proposal, she found a way to speak out loud and clear about how negatively she viewed artistic production in the 1980s. She therefore decided to create a performance that went against the grain, serving as a counterpoint to what was happening in the contemporary art scene. In those years, most artists had become completely conformist and overly accommodating to market forces. ORLAN wanted to create a performance that built on her previous work—a performance oriented toward the future, radical in and of itself and transcending itself.  

It was while reading *La Robe* (which she would use as a motto for all her “surgical-performance” operations) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, that the idea of this “passage à l’acte” crossed her mind. She thought that at that time they were beginning to have the means to bridge the gap between the internal image and the external image. She then said that she was engaging in “woman-to-woman transsexualism,” alluding to transsexuals: a man who feels like a woman wants others to see him as a woman (and vice versa). We could summarize this by saying that it is a communication problem. ORLAN creates a classic self-portrait, initially developed using a computer and then permanently inscribed on her flesh. She refers to this as “carnal art” to distinguish it from body art and questions the status of the body in society and its future in coming generations through new technologies and genetic manipulation.  

The artist’s body becomes a forum for public debate. 

On May 30, 1990, ORLAN’s birthday, in a deconsecrated church named “All Saints” in Newcastle, England, she announced during an inaugural ritual-performance her decision to undertake the Surgical-Performance Operations by reading her “Carnal Art” manifesto, which she had written in 1989. 

The series has two titles: TheThe Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN (a reference to the character who gradually came into being by adopting religious imagery in his major series Documentary Study: The Drapery, The Baroque) or new-images (A nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new tasks and achieve new feats. For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference—moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images,” that is, new technologies.) It is a series of nine performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York.  

In the very beginning, ORLAN created a self-portrait by digitally blending and hybridizing images of goddesses from Greek mythology—chosen not for the beauty standards they are supposed to represent, but rather for their stories. 

Diane was chosen because she defies both gods and men, because she is proactive—even aggressive—and because she leads a group. The Mona Lisa as a leading figure in art history, as a point of reference, because she is not beautiful by today’s standards, because there is a man hidden beneath this woman. We now know that it is Leonardo da Vinci’s self-portrait that lies hidden beneath the Mona Lisa (which brings us back to a question of identity).  

ORLAN will say: 

“ So I don’t want to look like Botticelli’s Venus.

I don’t want to look like Gustave Moreau’s Europa (who isn’t my favorite painter). I chose this painter’s depiction of Europa because she appears in an unfinished painting—as, in fact, do most of his paintings!

I don’t want to look like Gérard’s Psyche.

I don’t want to look like Diane from the Fontainebleau School.

I don’t want to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa… as some newspapers and television shows have said and continue to say, despite my many contradictions and outbursts of anger. (The media coverage I can’t escape—whether in print or on television—will be analyzed and understood in about ten years.) ”

For ORLAN, these depictions of female figures serve as a framework and a source of inspiration, and are symbolically far below them. Through this process of digital hybridization, she asked the surgeons to get as close as possible to this image.

In the three most recent surgical procedures performed in New York, ORLAN has broken free from conventional models by carrying out operations that were not intended to create beauty, but rather ugliness and monstrosity. 

At first, finding a surgeon was difficult. After many rejections, ORLAN found one—a very cautious surgeon who started by taking small steps, which allowed her to understand what she was getting into and to assess what she could manage to do in an operating room, what the limitations were and what her own limits were, understand how she reacted, how her body reacted, and thus learn to manage the entire surgical process better and better.  

ORLAN created this series to disrupt plastic surgery’s focus on enhancement and rejuvenation. ORLAN is not against cosmetic surgery, but against what people do with it. She thus uses this technique to invent a form of self-love by challenging the mask of the innate. The first condition agreed upon with the various surgeons was that there be no pain, as ORLAN advocates for BODY-PLEASURE. 

Each procedure was conceived as a rite of passage. As a visual artist, ORLAN sought to challenge the cold, stereotypical aesthetics of surgery and transform them. For each performance, ORLAN decorated the operating room, which, through this act, became her artist’s studio. She and the entire medical staff were dressed by a renowned designer who collaborated with the artist. The performances were punctuated by readings, and whenever the surgical procedure allowed, ORLAN created images, made films, videos, photographs, and drawings using her blood and her fingers, reliquaries using her fat and flesh, a sort of “holy shroud” made from her dried blood and medical gauze from the surgery—onto which she made photographic transfers—and objects that were subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

One could say, then, that this is a commissioned performance. In this proposal, she found a way to speak out loud and clear about how negatively she viewed artistic production in the 1980s. She therefore decided to create a performance that ran counter to—and served as a counterpoint to—what was happening in the contemporary art scene. In those years, most artists had become completely conformist and overly adapted to the laws of the market. ORLAN wanted to create a performance that built on her previous work—a performance oriented toward the future, radical in and of itself and transcending itself.  

It was while reading *La Robe* (which she would use as a motto for all her “surgical-performance” procedures) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, that the idea of this “passage à l’acte” occurred to her. She thought that at that time they were beginning to have the means to bridge the gap between the internal image and the external image. She then said that she was engaging in “woman-to-woman transsexualism,” alluding to transsexuals: a man who feels like a woman wants others to see him as a woman (and vice versa). We could summarize this by saying that it is a communication problem. ORLAN creates a classic self-portrait, initially developed using a computer and then permanently inscribed on her flesh. She refers to this as “carnal art” to distinguish it from body art and questions the status of the body in society and its future in coming generations through new technologies and genetic manipulation.  

The artist’s body becomes a venue for public debate. 

On May 30, 1990, ORLAN’s birthday, in a deconsecrated church called “All Saints” in Newcastle, England, she announced, during an inaugural ritual performance, her decision to undertake Surgical Performance Operations by reading her “Carnal Art” manifesto, which she had written in 1989. 

The series has two titles: TheThe Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN (a reference to the character who gradually came into being by adopting religious imagery in his major series Documentary Study: The Drapery, The Baroque) or new images—images (A nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new tasks and achieve new feats. For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference—moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images,” that is, new technologies.) It is a series of nine performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York.  

In the very beginning, ORLAN created a self-portrait by mixing and blending, using a computer, images of goddesses from Greek mythology—chosen not for the beauty standards they are supposed to represent, but rather for their stories. 

Diane was chosen because she defies both gods and men, because she is proactive—even aggressive—and because she leads a group. The Mona Lisa as a key figure in art history, as a point of reference, because she isn’t beautiful by today’s standards, because there is something masculine beneath this woman. We now know that it is Leonardo da Vinci’s own self-portrait that lies hidden beneath that of the Mona Lisa (which brings us back to a question of identity).  

ORLAN will say: 

“So I don’t want to look like Botticelli’s Venus.

I don’t want to look like Gustave Moreau’s Europa (who isn’t my favorite painter). I chose this painter’s Europa because she appears in an unfinished painting—as do most of his paintings, for that matter!

I don’t want to look like Gérard’s Psyche.

I don’t want to look like Diane from the Fontainebleau School.

I don’t want to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa… as some newspapers and television shows have said—and continue to say—despite my many contradictions and outbursts of anger. (The media coverage I can’t escape—whether in print or on television—will be analyzed and understood in about ten years.) ”

For ORLAN, these depictions of female figures serve as a framework and a source of inspiration, and are symbolically far below them. Through this process of digital hybridization, she asked the surgeons to come as close as possible to this image.

In the three most recent surgical performances carried out in New York, ORLAN has broken free from established models by staging operations that were not intended to create beauty but rather ugliness and monstrosity. 

At first, finding a surgeon was difficult. After many rejections, ORLAN found one—a very cautious surgeon who started by taking small steps, which allowed her to understand what she was getting into and to assess what she could manage to do in an operating room, what the limitations were—and her own limitations— understand how she reacted, how her body reacted, and thus learn to manage the entire surgical process better and better.  

ORLAN created this series to disrupt the conventional practices of cosmetic surgery aimed at enhancement and rejuvenation. ORLAN is not opposed to cosmetic surgery itself, but rather to the way it is used. She thus uses this technique to create a form of self-love by challenging the notion of innate appearance. The primary condition agreed upon with the various surgeons was that there be no pain, as ORLAN advocates for BODY-PLEASURE. 

Each procedure was conceived as a rite of passage. As a visual artist, ORLAN sought to challenge the cold, stereotypical aesthetics of surgery and transform them. For each performance, ORLAN decorated the operating room, which, through this act, became her artist’s studio. She and the entire medical staff were costumed by a renowned designer who collaborated with the artist. The performances were accompanied by readings, and whenever the surgical procedure allowed, ORLAN created images, made films, videos, photographs, and drawings using her blood and her fingers, reliquaries using her fat and flesh, a sort of “holy shroud” made from her dried blood and medical gauze from the surgery—onto which she made photographic transfers—and objects that were subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

One could say, then, that this is a commissioned performance. In this proposal, she found a way to speak out loud and clear about how negatively she viewed the artistic output of the 1980s. She therefore decided to create a performance that went against the grain, serving as a counterpoint to what was happening in the contemporary art scene. In those years, most artists had become completely conformist and overly accommodating to market forces. ORLAN wanted to create a performance that built on her previous work—one that looked toward the future, radical in and of itself and transcending itself.  

It was while reading *La Robe* (which she would cite as the epigraph for all her surgical-performance operations) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, that the idea of this “passage à l’acte” occurred to her. She thought that at that time they were beginning to have the means to bridge the gap between the internal image and the external image. She then said that she was engaging in “woman-to-woman transsexualism,” alluding to transsexuals: a man who feels like a woman wants others to see him as a woman (and vice versa). We could summarize this by saying that it is a communication problem. ORLAN creates a classic self-portrait, initially developed using a computer and then permanently inscribed on her flesh. She then speaks of “carnal art” to distinguish herself from body art and questions the status of the body in society and its future in coming generations through new technologies and genetic manipulation.  

The artist’s body becomes a venue for public debate. 

On May 30, 1990, ORLAN’s birthday, in a deconsecrated church called “All Saints” in Newcastle, England, she announced, during an inaugural ritual-performance, her decision to undertake the Surgical-Performance Operations by reading her “Carnal Art” manifesto, which she had written in 1989. 

The series has two titles: TheThe Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN (a reference to the character who gradually came into being by embodying religious imagery in her major series Documentary Study: The Drapery, The Baroque) or new images—images (A nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new tasks and achieve new feats. For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference—moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images,” that is, new technologies.) It consists of a series of nine performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York.  

In the very beginning, ORLAN created a self-portrait by mixing and blending—using a computer—images of goddesses from Greek mythology, chosen not for the beauty standards they are supposed to represent but rather for their stories. 

Diane was chosen because she defies both gods and men, because she is proactive—even aggressive—and because she leads a group. The Mona Lisa as a key figure in art history, as a point of reference—because she isn’t beautiful by today’s standards, because there is something masculine beneath this woman. We now know that it is Leonardo da Vinci’s own self-portrait that lies hidden beneath the Mona Lisa (which brings us back to a question of identity).  

ORLAN will say: 

“So I don’t want to look like Botticelli’s Venus.

I don’t want to look like Gustave Moreau’s Europa (who isn’t my favorite painter). I chose this painter’s Europa because she appears in an unfinished painting—as do most of his paintings, for that matter!

I don’t want to look like Gérard’s Psyche.

I don’t want to look like Diane from the Fontainebleau School.

I don’t want to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa… as some newspapers and TV shows have said and continue to say, despite my many contradictions and outbursts of anger. (The media coverage I can’t escape—whether in print or on television—will be analyzed and understood in about ten years.) ”

For ORLAN, these depictions of female figures serve as a framework and a source of inspiration, and are symbolically far below them. Through this process of digital hybridization, she asked the surgeons to get as close as possible to this image.

In the three most recent surgical procedures performed in New York, ORLAN has broken free from established models by carrying out operations that were not intended to create beauty but rather ugliness and monstrosity. 

At first, finding a surgeon was difficult. After many rejections, ORLAN found one—a very cautious surgeon who started by taking small steps, which allowed her to understand what she was getting into and to assess what she could manage to do in an operating room, what the limitations were—and her own limitations— understand how she reacted, how her body reacted, and thus learn to manage the entire surgical process better and better.  

ORLAN created this series to disrupt the conventional practices of cosmetic surgery aimed at enhancement and rejuvenation. ORLAN is not opposed to cosmetic surgery itself, but rather to the way it is used. She thus uses this technique to invent a form of self-love by challenging the mask of the “natural.” The primary condition agreed upon with the various surgeons was that there be no pain, as ORLAN advocates for BODY-PLEASURE. 

Each procedure was conceived as a rite of passage. As a visual artist, ORLAN sought to challenge the cold, stereotypical aesthetics of surgery and transform them. For each performance, ORLAN decorated the operating room, which, through this act, became her artist’s studio. She and the entire medical staff were costumed by a renowned designer who collaborated with the artist. The performances were punctuated by readings, and whenever the surgical procedure allowed, ORLAN created images, made films, videos, photographs, and drawings using her blood and her fingers, reliquaries made from her fat and flesh, a sort of “holy shroud” created from her dried blood and medical gauze from the surgery—onto which she made photographic transfers—and objects that were subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

One could say, then, that this is a commissioned performance. In this proposal, she found a way to speak out loud and clear about how badly she thought of artistic production in the 1980s. She therefore decided to create a performance that went against the grain, serving as a counterpoint to what was happening in the contemporary art scene. In those years, most artists had become completely conformist and overly accommodating to market forces. ORLAN wanted to create a performance that built on her previous work—a performance oriented toward the future, radical in and of itself and transcending itself.  

It was while reading *La Robe* (which she would use as a motto for all her “surgical-performance” operations) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, that the idea of this “passage à l’acte” occurred to her. She thought that at that time they were beginning to have the means to bridge the gap between the internal image and the external image. She then said that she was engaging in “woman-to-woman transsexualism,” alluding to transsexuals: a man who feels like a woman wants others to see him as a woman (and vice versa). We could summarize this by saying that it is a communication problem. ORLAN creates a classic self-portrait, initially developed using a computer and then permanently inscribed on her flesh. She refers to this as “carnal art” to distinguish it from body art and questions the status of the body in society and its future in coming generations through new technologies and genetic manipulation.  

The artist’s body becomes a venue for public debate. 

On May 30, 1990, ORLAN’s birthday, in a deconsecrated church called “All Saints” in Newcastle, England, she announced, during an inaugural ritual performance, her decision to undertake the Surgical-Performance Operations by reading her “Carnal Art” manifesto, which she had written in 1989. 

The series has two titles: TheThe Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN (a reference to the character who gradually came into being by adopting religious imagery in her major series Documentary Study: The Drapery, The Baroque) or “new images”—images (A nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new tasks and achieve new feats. For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference—moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images,” that is, new technologies.) It consists of a series of nine performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York.  

In the very beginning, ORLAN created a self-portrait by mixing and blending—using a computer—images of goddesses from Greek mythology, chosen not for the beauty standards they are supposed to represent but rather for their stories. 

Diane was chosen because she defies both gods and men, because she is proactive—even aggressive—and because she leads a group. The Mona Lisa as a key figure in art history, as a point of reference, because she is not beautiful by today’s standards, because there is a man hidden beneath this woman. We now know that it is Leonardo da Vinci’s own self-portrait that lies hidden beneath that of the Mona Lisa (which brings us back to a question of identity).  

ORLAN will say: 

“ So I don’t want to look like Botticelli’s Venus.

I don’t want to look like Gustave Moreau’s Europa (who isn’t my favorite painter). I chose this painter’s depiction of Europa because she appears in an unfinished painting—as, in fact, do most of his paintings!

I don’t want to look like Gérard’s Psyche.

I don’t want to look like Diane from the Fontainebleau School.

I don’t want to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa… as some newspapers and television shows have said and continue to say, despite my many contradictions and outbursts of anger. (The media coverage I can’t escape—whether in print or on television—will be analyzed and make sense in about ten years.) ”

For ORLAN, these depictions of female figures serve as a framework and a source of inspiration, and are symbolically far below them. Through this process of digital hybridization, she asked the surgeons to come as close as possible to this image.

In the three most recent surgical procedures performed in New York, ORLAN has broken free from conventional models by carrying out operations that were not intended to create beauty, but rather ugliness and monstrosity. 

At first, finding a surgeon was difficult. After many rejections, ORLAN found one—a very cautious surgeon who started by taking small steps, which allowed her to understand what she was getting into and to assess what she could actually accomplish in an operating room, what the limitations were and what her own limits were, understand how she reacted, how her body reacted, and thus learn to manage the entire surgical process better and better.  

ORLAN created this series to subvert plastic surgery’s focus on enhancement and rejuvenation. ORLAN is not against plastic surgery itself, but against what people do with it. She thus uses this technique to create a form of self-love by challenging the mask of the innate. The primary condition agreed upon with the various surgeons was that there be no pain, as ORLAN advocates for BODY-PLEASURE. 

Each procedure was conceived as a rite of passage. As a visual artist, ORLAN sought to challenge the cold, stereotypical aesthetics of surgery and transform them. For each ORLAN performance, she decorated the operating room, which, through this act, became her artist’s studio. She and the entire medical staff were costumed by a renowned designer who worked in collaboration with the artist. The performances were punctuated by readings, and whenever the surgical procedure allowed, ORLAN created images, made films, videos, photographs, and drawings using her blood and fingers, reliquaries with her fat and flesh, a sort of “holy shroud” made from her dried blood and medical gauze from the surgery—onto which she made photographic transfers—and objects that were subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

One could say, then, that this is a commissioned performance. In this proposal, she found a way to speak out loud and clear about how negatively she viewed artistic production in the 1980s. She therefore decided to stage a performance that went against the grain, serving as a counterpoint to what was happening in the contemporary art scene. In those years, most artists had become completely conformist and overly accommodating to market forces. ORLAN wanted to create a performance that built on her previous work—one that looked toward the future, radical in and of itself and transcending her own persona.  

It was while reading *La Robe* (which she would use as a motto for all her surgical-performance operations) by Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, that the idea of this “passage à l’acte” occurred to her. She thought that at that time they were beginning to have the means to bridge the gap between the internal image and the external image. She then said that she was engaging in “woman-to-woman transsexualism,” alluding to transsexuals: a man who feels like a woman wants others to see him as a woman (and vice versa). We could summarize this by saying that it is a communication problem. ORLAN creates a classic self-portrait, initially developed using a computer and then permanently inscribed on her flesh. She refers to this as “carnal art” to distinguish it from body art and questions the status of the body in society and its future in coming generations through new technologies and genetic manipulation.  

The artist’s body becomes a venue for public debate. 

On May 30, 1990, ORLAN’s birthday, in a deconsecrated church called “All Saints” in Newcastle, England, she announced, during an inaugural ritual performance, her decision to undertake the Surgical-Performance Operations by reading her “Carnal Art” manifesto, which she had written in 1989. 

The series has two titles: TheThe Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN (a reference to the character who gradually came into being by adopting religious imagery in her major series Documentary Study: The Drapery, The Baroque) or new images—images (A nod to the Hindu gods and goddesses who change their appearance to undertake new works and achieve new feats. For ORLAN, this involves shifting her frame of reference—moving from Judeo-Christian religious iconography to Greek mythology. Furthermore, this second title alludes to the so-called “new images,” that is, new technologies.) It is a series of nine performances created by ORLAN between 1990 and 1993 in Paris, Brussels, and New York.  

In the very beginning, ORLAN created a self-portrait by mixing and blending, using a computer, images of goddesses from Greek mythology—chosen not for the beauty standards they are supposed to represent, but rather for their stories. 

Diane was chosen because she defies both gods and men, because she is proactive—even aggressive—and because she leads a group. The Mona Lisa as a flagship figure in art history, as a point of reference, because she isn’t beautiful by today’s standards of beauty, because there is a man hidden beneath this woman. We now know that it is Leonardo da Vinci’s self-portrait that lies hidden beneath the Mona Lisa (which brings us back to the issue of identity).  

ORLAN will say: 

“ISo I don’t want to look like Botticelli’s Venus.

I don’t want to look like Gustave Moreau’s Europa (who isn’t my favorite painter). I chose this painter’s depiction of Europa because she appears in an unfinished painting—as, in fact, do most of his paintings!

I don’t want to look like Gérard’s Psyche.

I don’t want to look like Diane from the Fontainebleau School.

I don’t want to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa… as some newspapers and television shows have said and continue to say, despite my many contradictions and outbursts of anger. (The media coverage I can’t escape—whether in print or on television—will be analyzed and make sense in about ten years.) ”

For ORLAN, these depictions of female figures serve as a framework and a source of inspiration, and are symbolically far below them. Through this process of digital hybridization, she asked the surgeons to come as close as possible to this image.

In the three most recent surgical procedures performed in New York, ORLAN has broken free from conventional models by carrying out operations that were not intended to create beauty but rather ugliness and monstrosity. 

At first, finding a surgeon was difficult. After many rejections, ORLAN found one—a very cautious surgeon who started by taking small steps, which allowed her to understand what she was getting into and to assess what she could manage to do in an operating room, what the limitations were and her own limits, understand how she reacted, how her body reacted, and thus learn to manage the entire surgical process better and better.  

ORLAN created this series to disrupt the conventional practices of cosmetic surgery aimed at enhancement and rejuvenation. ORLAN is not against cosmetic surgery itself, but rather against the way it is used. She thus uses this technique to create a form of self-love by challenging the mask of the “natural.” The primary condition agreed upon with the various surgeons was that there be no pain, as ORLAN advocates for BODY-PLEASURE. 

Each procedure was conceived as a rite of passage. As a visual artist, ORLAN sought to challenge the cold, stereotypical aesthetics of surgery and transform them. For each performance, ORLAN decorated the operating room, which, through this act, became her artist’s studio. She and the entire medical staff were dressed by a renowned designer who collaborated with the artist. The performances were punctuated by readings, and whenever the surgical procedure allowed, ORLAN created images, made films, videos, photographs, and drawings using her blood and her fingers, reliquaries using her fat and flesh, a sort of “holy shroud” made from her dried blood and the medical gauze from her surgery, onto which she made photographic transfers, and objects that were subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries.

To escape the father’s territory, you have to change your skin. ORLAN then decided to experiment with new, multiple forms, in a humorous, distanced vein. ORLAN is in favor of shifting, mutant, nomadic identities, not fixed ones.

In this series, ORLAN has a different outfit for each photo, as well as a hat ranging from a kepi to a mitre, a cap and a donkey’s head.

Joël Savary, the director of the Centre D’Hérouville Saint-Clair who had invited him for a major exhibition, posed disguised as a garage mechanic with a huge 12″ wrench positioned in his trouser pocket to imitate an erection. He holds ORLAN’s skirt while she is elevated on an elevator. After this series, ORLAN never used Judeo-Christian iconography again.

ORLAN decided to see what was going on by doing the same thing to the other side of humanity, reproducing the work, including its dimensions and frame, in photographic form. She then presented Jean-Christophe Bouvet, an actor who played in “Sous le soleil de Satan” with Gérard Depardieu, with his cock,  medium-sized and erect. ORLAN describes it as “the devil’s tail”.  

This feminist response questions the role of men and women in our society and how they are represented.

In 2022, in view of current events, ORLAN created a second version of “L’Origine de la guerre“, thirty years after the first, with a new model.

The artist manipulates a number of accessories such as white crosses, black crosses, white easels, black easels, glass balls… She assumes real building materials, cinder blocks, while the background of the work is made up of imitation plastic bricks painted yellow, so the real “and” the fake rub shoulders without clashing. 

ORLAN levitates on a video screen with the digital images of our time, while citing the marble sculptures of another era. In this series, ORLAN emphasizes that there is no dichotomy between today’s digital images and the images of folded sculptures quoting Bernini. The white and black Madonnas are draped in skai, a faux leather that looks like marble when lit, evoking Baroque drapery. ORLAN has created a link between the “old” and the “new” through this photographic series, showing different times in the same space-time. She has blended a religious vocabulary with a secular plastic vocabulary to highlight the underlying sensuality of religious iconography, taking into account the lesson of the Baroque, which does not ask us to choose between good “or” evil. The Baroque shows us Bernini’s Saint Theresa enjoying the angel’s arrow in an erotic, ecstatic ecstasy. Lacan talked a lot about it.

The artist manipulates a number of accessories such as white crosses, black crosses, white easels, black easels, glass balls… She assumes real building materials, cinder blocks, while the background of the work is made up of imitation plastic bricks painted yellow, so the real “and” the fake rub shoulders without clashing. 

ORLAN levitates on a video screen with the digital images of our time, while citing the marble sculptures of another era. In this series, ORLAN emphasizes that there is no dichotomy between today’s digital images and the images of folded sculptures quoting Bernini. The white and black Madonnas are draped in skai, a faux leather that looks like marble when lit, evoking Baroque drapery. ORLAN has created a link between the “old” and the “new” through this photographic series, showing different times in the same space-time. She has blended a religious vocabulary with a secular plastic vocabulary to highlight the underlying sensuality of religious iconography, taking into account the lesson of the Baroque, which does not ask us to choose between good “or” evil. The Baroque shows us Bernini’s Saint Theresa enjoying the angel’s arrow in an erotic, ecstatic ecstasy. Lacan talked a lot about it.

ORLAN had to undergo emergency surgery. While waiting for the ambulance, she still had time to get her team on board to film and photograph her operation. The video cassettes were then taken one by one to the festival, and the operation was screened at the FNAC as if it were a programmed performance. ORLAN has always thought of life as a reusable aesthetic phenomenon, and this was an obvious choice. This operation was decisive in his career.

On the occasion of her residency at the Getty Research Institute in 2007, ORLAN asked the eminent researchers in residence with her that year to give her a book, or the title of a book that had most influenced their thinking, their work, their lives. The artist placed them all on a large granite block at the entrance, where the words “Getty Research Institute” were engraved, then lay down next to the books, and asked someone to remove the ones sticking out of her body. After measuring them with her body, ORLAN read them continuously, annotating them. ORLAN carried out this performance several times in her life, in different places and circumstances, a performance of the body to the corpus of the book.

On the occasion of her residency at the Getty Research Institute in 2007, ORLAN asked the eminent researchers in residence with her that year to give her a book, or the title of a book that had most influenced their thinking, their work, their lives. The artist placed them all on a large granite block at the entrance, where the words “Getty Research Institute” were engraved, then lay down next to the books, and asked someone to remove the ones sticking out of her body. After measuring them with her body, ORLAN read them continuously, annotating them. ORLAN carried out this performance several times in her life, in different places and circumstances, a performance of the body to the corpus of the book.

With this gesture, ORLAN invites the other to become ORLAN and allows herself to resemble the other. The artist distances herself from the other, while at the same time drawing closer to them. Artist and guest step outside their own frame. 

ORLAN has visited several of a participant’s apartments to see if the clothes are in keeping with her place of residence, and continues to exchange ideas with the Other.

In 1980, ORLAN travelled to Italy to study the Baroque and understand this aversion. This study trip enabled him to identify works of great importance in the history of art. The Baroque has been a major source of inspiration for ORLAN, who has  worked on this theme for over ten years in her major series Etude Documentaire: le Drapé-le Baroque.

Judeo-Christian culture asks us to choose between good “or” evil. The Baroque invited the artist to reflect on this “or” and to use the “and”: good “and” evil, for in Bernini’s work, which inspired her so much, he shows us St. Teresa enjoying the angel’s arrow in an ecstatic “and” erotic ecstasy. Jacques Lacan wrote extensively about this in his book Encore.  

Most of his works are based on this Baroque lesson.

On the other, a life-size black-and-white photograph of her torso, with a flashing red lamp positioned at breast level, and an arrow pointing to the slit where the five-franc coin could be seen falling down a transparent plastic esophagus to a pubis of the same nature. The performance lasted 30 minutes, and 17 participants had the privilege of buying an artist’s kiss.

It took place at the Grand Palais, and for that amount, ORLAN gave a real artist’s kiss—not a childish peck, but a French kiss…It resulted in a massive media scandal—so much so that the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) had never seen so many press articles categorized not under “FIAC” but under “the artist’s kiss.” ORLAN was also invited to appear on numerous television shows.

As a result, ORLAN was fired from the school where she was teaching to train socio-cultural animators. Her students immediately went on strike, creating songs in praise of the “artist’s kiss” and to her glory, demanding that she be reinstated, which never happened…  

What followed was a terrible period when she had no money, no place to sleep and no food to eat. She lost her studio and many of her works because they had been sealed off.  

ORLAN finally passed a competitive examination to become a teacher at a fine arts school in Dijon, and there were several happy endings. The sculpture was purchased by a public collection, the FRAC des Pays de la Loire. This work has traveled all over the world, including the United States in the Wak exhibition, and was requested by FIAC for its 30th anniversary. It was displayed at the glass-protected entrance, and on the large wall was written “Le Baiser de l’artiste l’oeuvre qui a le plus impactée l’histoire de la FIAC”.

Police officers wanted to charge her with exhibitionism, but it was impossible because ORLAN was dressed from head to toe and had her identity papers in her bag. 

In the public space, others are confronted with the representation of her nudity, without her actually being naked. ORLAN highlights this same gap in public life, where others represent rather than present themselves. In this sense, performance acts on real space, disrupting the relationship with the other and making the encounter critical. ORLAN seeks to get closer to the environment, to objects that mediate encounters with the other, and to create by challenging and disrupting the law without condemning it.

There was also a sign with the prices of the parts of her body where it was written “does my body belong to me?”. “guaranteed pure ORLAN with no colorants or preservatives”.

The aim was to question the way in which fragmentary representation transforms our relationship with reality. This issue of objectification and body fragmentation raises questions about the right to dispose of one’s body in relation to the historical and social context, and the right to sell the representation of one’s body when selling one’s body is forbidden.

ORLAN en Grande Odalisque d’Ingres is a black and white photograph from the Tableaux vivants series (1977-78), a counterpart to the famous painting by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres. Stand-alone extract from a major installation presented on the occasion of the Tendances contemporaines exhibition (1977) at the Espace Lyonnais d’Art Contemporain. The photograph was reproduced in different formats, arranged in the space under increasingly large pillows, one the exact size of the Ingres painting, the other the size of ORLAN’s body, and 2 others that exceeded the size of the body and were out of all proportion.  

Made from the sheets of the trousseau and meant to be the physical representation of the one photographed, pillows and photographs were hung with butcher’s hooks and plastic ears from the four corners of the pillows, winking playfully at the pillow confidences. ORLAN’s aim with this installation was to question the notion of scale inherent in the photographic medium, and to question the stereotypical female accessories of Ingres’ painting.

The concept is to illustrate how reading has enabled the artist to stand up straight, to speak loud and clear, with content thanks to knowledge. This approach enabled him to emancipate himself from his often poorly-educated working-class social class, and reach a higher cultural and intellectual level. This is the beginning of its internal reconstruction.

The second series, ORLAN standing in her book straitjacket, shows how reading causes pain and prevents the body from moving. ORLAN presents herself with a wooden structure that she wears like a body prosthesis, to which she has glued books. This gesture shows the weight of reading on the body, on the shoulders.

By adopting these postures, ORLAN tackles the cultural representations that have an impact on the attitude, space and role adopted by women, as well as the determinism of parental formatting, while questioning Judeo-Christian iconography.

The image of the sublimated, disembodied, iconic woman collides with the artist’s body.

ORLAN has entitled several of her series “strip-tease” because she believes that striptease is impossible for women, as they are clothed in fantasies, comparisons anda priori, which are the clothes they can’t take off.

But when the day came, the artist didn’t show up. In her place, an assistant held up a sign with the following message: “My performance is my physical absence. The absence of my woman’s body. No body, no eroticism, no striptease. Frustration as performance.” He then leaves the sign on the floor.

This gesture—or rather, this deliberate absence—constitutes the performance. It is an act of artistic and political resistance: ORLAN withdraws her body, her image, and her flesh from the expected stage, refusing objectification, refusing the voyeuristic gaze, and even refusing conventional artistic consumption. This performance takes on its full meaning in the context of the 1970s, a period when women’s bodies, in art as in society, were at once overexposed and controlled, desired and censored. ORLAN highlights this contradiction by removing the female body from the field of visibility. This withdrawal, far from being an erasure, becomes a political statement. This refusal to be present becomes an act of reverse censorship. The term “frustration action” underscores the very heart of the performance: the frustrated audience becomes an accomplice to the critique. By coming to see—and seeing nothing—they directly experience what it means to be deprived of representation.

ORLAN  has used sheets to stretch them like a canvas on a stretcher, dressed up as a virgin and a madonna, but has also carried her sheets to her lovers’ homes to ejaculate in specific places on the sheets. Following this gesture, she took a seamstress’s tambourine to stretch the sheet over the site of the semen stain, which she had spotted with a wash to make the stain as visible as possible. Then ORLAN embroidered the sheets with a very large needle and thick black thread. This performance was performed in different versions, sometimes blindfolded, sometimes looking at the audience or with eyes closed. The result was a very rough embroidery that his mother would not have liked at all.

Based on this performance, ORLAN created an installation of 7 photos, framed on one side by a poetic text “reminiscence of maternal discourse” and on the other, the seamstress’s tambourine with the sperm stain. This piece was purchased by FNAC.

She has also produced several pieces, sometimes in triptychs with the text in the middle and two mirrored photos, and sometimes with single photos presented separately.