ORLAN
Background information: Orlan is a French artist who was born on May 30, 1947 in Saint-Etienne, Loire. She gave herself the name Orlan in 1971 (her real name is Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte). Orlan lives and works in New York, Los Angeles and Paris. Orlan is associated with the postmodern frame as she presented to her audience in the period of contemporary art. She interprets her body into performance art which she is known for.
Artmaking practices: Orlan’s artmaking practices consisted mainly of performance art, Corporeal Landscape and Carnal Art. Personal experiences including an ectopic pregnancy was a catalyst for the use of surgery in her art making as well. She combined all these techniques and experiences to focus on her aim in her work which was the sculpturing and carving up of the body. This was also important as these were her influences which guided her work for the world to see. Orlan was not interested in materiality so her main medium which she used was the media as she payed close attention to the world and its technology to inform and achieve her specific methods of art making.
Controversial French artist Orlan is perhaps most infamous for using her own body as a tool for a series of ‘performance-surgeries’ known as The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan’ in 1978. Her aim was to transform her own physical body, based on, and inspired by, classical beauty ideals from Western art including a chin like Botticelli’s Venus, the nose of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Psyche, the lips of Boucher’s Europe, the eyes of Diana and the forehead of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Orlan chose all these iconic figures for the stories connected with them.
Orlan is widely known around the world for her ‘wild’ ideas when it came to facial surgeries, However many people do not know about her previous work on digital interpretations. Since the early 1990’s Orlan has practiced using various software in order to interpret cultures such as African and American Indian while still incorporating her facial features. The shift from performance art into digital photography makes an important moment in Orlan’s work as it changes the way her audience and critics perceive her work.
Artmaking practices: Orlan’s artmaking practices consisted mainly of performance art, Corporeal Landscape and Carnal Art. Personal experiences including an ectopic pregnancy was a catalyst for the use of surgery in her art making as well. She combined all these techniques and experiences to focus on her aim in her work which was the sculpturing and carving up of the body. This was also important as these were her influences which guided her work for the world to see. Orlan was not interested in materiality so her main medium which she used was the media as she payed close attention to the world and its technology to inform and achieve her specific methods of art making.
Controversial French artist Orlan is perhaps most infamous for using her own body as a tool for a series of ‘performance-surgeries’ known as The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan’ in 1978. Her aim was to transform her own physical body, based on, and inspired by, classical beauty ideals from Western art including a chin like Botticelli’s Venus, the nose of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Psyche, the lips of Boucher’s Europe, the eyes of Diana and the forehead of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Orlan chose all these iconic figures for the stories connected with them.
Orlan is widely known around the world for her ‘wild’ ideas when it came to facial surgeries, However many people do not know about her previous work on digital interpretations. Since the early 1990’s Orlan has practiced using various software in order to interpret cultures such as African and American Indian while still incorporating her facial features. The shift from performance art into digital photography makes an important moment in Orlan’s work as it changes the way her audience and critics perceive her work.