Orlan

Orlan (born 1947) is a French artist. She is not tied to any one material, technology, or artistic practice, using sculpture, photography, performance, video, 3D, video games, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and robotics (she has created a robot in her image that speaks with her voice) as well as scientific and medical techniques such as surgery and biotechnology to question modern social phenomena. She has said that her art is not body art, but 'carnal art,' which lacks the suffering aspect of body art. Since the 1960s and the 1970s, Orlan has questioned the status of the body and the political, religious, social, and traditional pressures that are inscribed in it. Her work denounces the violence done to the body and in particular to women's bodies, and thus engages in a feminist struggle. She makes her body the privileged instrument where our own relationship to otherness is played out. This work of Orlan on the body is done in particular by the means of photography. In 1976, for example, she walked the streets wearing a dress on which her naked body was represented. In the same period, in Portugal, she offered photos glued to wood and cut out corresponding to pieces of herself: an arm, a piece of breast, etc. In 1977, Orlan performed Kiss of the artist (Baiser de l'artiste), during the International Fair of Contemporary Art (FIAC ), in the Grand Palais in Paris. Orlan displayed a life-size photograph of her own nude torso, which she sat behind. The life-sized photograph was turned into a slot machine. A spectator would insert a coin and could see it descending to the groin before being awarded a kiss from the artist herself. The installation created a scandal that cost the artist her teaching position. In 1978, she created the International Symposium of the Performance in Lyon, which she animated until 1982. Her manifesto of "carnal art" (Manifeste de l'Art Charnel) is followed by a series of surgical operations- performances that she carries out between 1990 and 1993.