Excerpt from the Universal Dictionary of Women Creators © 2013 Des femmes – Antoinette Fouque
Hugues Marchal
Emblematic of the interest that contemporary artists have shown in performance and the possibilities of using their bodies as a medium of creation, ORLAN is singled out by her multiple practices. Questioning the representations of art, gender, sexuality and the subject, this artist of international stature has never ceased to put her appearance and identity into play in order to reinvent herself in the course of a continuous work of “self-sculpting”.
Trained at the Conservatory of Dramatic Art and at the School of Fine Arts (now ESADSE) in Saint-Etienne, she became famous at the age of 17 in performances, where she quoted classical works that she re-enacted during tableaux vivants. In Étude documentaire : le drapé, le baroque (1974 – 1984), a set mixing performances, photographs and sculpture, and returning to the Judeo-Christian iconography and the baroque, the sheets of his trousseau, diverted from their matrimonial vocation, become the support of provocative works.
In 1977, she invests the Fiac (International Fair of Contemporary Art) of Paris with Le Baiser de l’artiste (Frac des Pays de la Loire). Sitting behind a photograph of her nude bust, she sells kisses to visitors or invites them to offer a candle to her image as a Madonna. The installation, which superimposes a sacred woman – ORLAN-saint – and a woman-object – ORLAN-body – caused a scandal and led to her dismissal from her position as an educator. From this first period, his creation advances by revisiting his own works; a majority of his performances and the pieces which derive from them enter into long term series.
Other one-off works retain an individual status, such as his parody of Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, which became L’Origine de la guerre (1989) showing a close-up of a man’s lower abdomen in erection, and ORLAN plays a pioneering role in the artistic use of telematics, via the Minitel. In the 1990s, with the help of doctors, she began a series of “performance surgeries”. She transforms the operating room into a workshop, where her body is operated and modified under her direction. Some surgeries are filmed and broadcast live by satellite in high art places(Omniprésence, 1993). If the process, from the project to the result, constitutes a work of art in its own right, the interventions also give rise to videos, photographs, drawings and other pieces recycling the bodily materials resulting from the surgery.
The artist associates these performances with the reading of philosophers’ essays, such as Michel Serres, and she writes her Manifesto of “L’Art Charnel” (1992) which explains the stakes of her work.
Critical detour of the aesthetic surgery, demonstration of the new plasticity of the flesh, which allows the contemporary subject to make himself the author of his own body, questioning of the codes of beauty and their violence: his project distinguishes itself from the body art, by refusing the pain and makes of his body a “place of public debate”. In Reconfigurations-Self-Hybridations (from 1998), she uses digital image-processing technologies to blend her own face with works representing body and artistic canons borrowed from pre-Columbian art, African sculpture, the Indian paintings of the American George Catlin (1796 – 1872) and Chinese art. These hybrid portraits blur individual, sexual, temporal, ethnic, religious or artistic distinctions to create as many mutant figures. At the same time, she continues to explore the impact of biotechnology.
In 2007, his installation Le Manteau d’Arlequin (Harlequin’s Coat) combines video projections, Petri dishes and a bioreactor allowing the in vitro culture of his own cells combined with those of other human and animal strains. Patchwork, collaboration and reworking also govern the creation of clothing works, when she collaborates with fashion designers to exhibit clothes recycled from her wardrobe. This logic of recombination continues when she invests the abbey of Maubuisson with her exhibition Unions mixtes, mariages libres et noces barbares (2009). The thoughtful and complex journey of this extraordinary artist, who intensely mixes art, life and socio-political interrogations, has always taken place in close dialogue with the public and cheerfully mocks consensus.
Awards (selection)
2021 ORLAN writes her autobiography ” ORLAN, STRIP-TEASE: TOUT SUR MA VIE, TOUT SUR MON ART ” published by Gallimard and receives the François Morellet Prize for this autobiography.
2020 ORLAN is honored with the medal of the National Order of the Legion of Honor with the rank of Chevalière, medal awarded in 2021 by the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin.
2019 ORLAN is honored with the special Woman of the Year award, given by Prince Albert II of Monaco.
2017 ORLAN was awarded the Female Excellence Award for all her work as an artist by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2016 ORLAN received the E-reputation award designating the most observed and commented on artist on the web.
2010 ORLAN was honored with the medal of Chevalier de l’ordre national du Mérite by the Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand.
2007 on the occasion of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art of Saint-Etienne, ORLAN receives the Gold Medal of Saint-Etienne as well as the Bronze Medal of Sainte-Etienne Metropole, his hometown.
2003 ORLAN was elevated to the rank of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY (selection)
2021 ORLAN, STRIP-TEASE : ALL ABOUT MY LIFE, ALL ABOUT MY ART,
ORLAN, Gallimard, Collection “Témoins de l’art”, Paris
2018 ORLAN before ORLAN, Ceysson B., Chauvel-Lévy L., Hill E.,
Ceysson éditions d’Art
ORLAN-oïde hybrid robot with artificial and collective intelligence, Devilliers, Kyrou Ariel, ORLAN, Martin V., Éditions Lienart
2017 ORLAN IN CAPITALS, Neutres J., Rice S., Franck T., Monterosso J.-L. , SKIRA Editions
2016 ORLAN TechnoBody Retrospective, 1966-2016, Park Moon Soon, Soukyoun L., Jinsang Y., Grau D., Piguet P., Prieto I., Quaranta D., Éditions Scala
Personal exhibitions (selection)
2021 ORLAN in The Sammlung Verbund Collection, Vertical Gallery, Vienna, Austria
ORLANoid 2.0, curator: Cian Walsh, Science Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2020 ORLAN, Institute Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2019 ORLAN SAINTE-ORLAN, Ceysson & Bénétière Gallery, New York, USA
Petition against death, curator: Richard Martel,
Le Lieu, Quebec, Canada
Woman with head(s), curator : Yann Toma Paris, Sorbonne Art Gallery, Paris
Screening Apparition and Gloide by Saint ORLAN, L’hybride Lille, Lille
2018 ORLAN AVANT ORLAN, Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris
Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Andrea Valencia, Mexico City, Mexico
Vertical Gallery, Daniela Hahn, Vienna, Austria
2017 VideORLAN – Technobody, curator: Alessandra Mammì,
Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma, Rome, Italy
ORLAN EN CAPITALES, curator : Jérôme Neutres,
European House of Photography, Paris
2016 ORLAN TODAY, curator : Sylvia Froux,
FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen
ORLAN-Techno-Body Retrospective, curator: Soukyoun Lee,
Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2015 Variable time and kiss of jellyfish, curator: Carme Sais,
Bòlit Contemporary Art Center, Girona, Spain
Terapia dell’Ibrido, curator: Sabrina Zannier, Castello di Susans, Majano, Italy
Pink October, Projection on the Horizon Tower by Jean Nouvel, curator : Gilles Drouault, Paris
ORLAN, Strip-tease of the cells to the bone, curator : Emmanuel Cuisinier, Centre des arts, Enghien-les-bains
Temps variable et baiser de méduses, curator: Jackie-Ruth Meyer, Centre d’art LE LAIT, Albi
2014 Beijing Opera facing design and augmented reality, Galerie Michel Rein, Paris
Self-hybridations artworks with Mask of the Pekin’s Opera, curator: Jooyoung Sung, Sejul Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
The origin of the war, curator: Syvie Zavatta,
FRAC Franche-comté, Besançon
Hysteria, curated by Gabriella Daris, Blacks, London, UK
ORLAN: The icon of the French contemporary art, Guest artist of “Riga, European City of Culture“, curator:
Inese Baranovska, Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Riga, Latvia
2013 Men sana in corporel…, curator: Pierre-Olivier Rollin, B.P.S.22, Hôpital Notre-Dame à la Rose, Lessines, Belgium
2012 Hybridization and Refiguration, curator: Ricardo Arcos-Palma,
Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogota, Bogota, Colombia
Carnal Art and Obsolet Body, curator: Ricardo Arcos-Palma,
Museo de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia
Pictures and objects from the MesuRages, curator: Bart de Baere, M HKA – Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium
The Factory Direct, curator: Eric Shiner,
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA
2011 Un boeuf sur la langue, curator: Blandine Chavanne, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes
2010 Bodies, Technology, Fashion, curated by Daniel J. Veneciano, Lincoln, USA
ORLAN Remix, Are you Belgian? Or the hybrid flag sheets, curator : Johan Muyle, Project Room | La Cambre | Ecole Supérieure des Arts Visuels, Brussels, Belgium
2009 Mixed Unions, Free Marriages and Barbarian Weddings, curator : Caroline Coll Seror, Abbaye de Maubuisson
Self-Hybridations, curator: Annick Notter,
Museum of the New World, La Rochelle
2008 Self hybridization, American-Indians, galerie Michel Rein
2007 The story, Museum of Modern Art of Saint-Etienne
2005 Eléments favoris n°4, Artothèque de la Réunion, La Réunion
Light piece (in collaboration with Philippe Chiambaretta), Palais de Tokyo, Paris
2004 Methods of the artist, 1964-2004, retrospective, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris
ORLAN 04/04/04, Centre de Création Contemporaine, Tours, France
2003 Tricéphale, Michel Rein Gallery, Paris, France
2002 Eléments favoris, retrospective, FRAC des Pays-de-la-Loire, Carquefou, Nantes, France
2001 ORLAN 1964-2001, ARTIUM Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
2000 This is my body…this is my software, Bregenzer Kunstverein, Magazin 4, Austria
ORLAN, with her committed and political works, questions the status of women in contemporary society. It is not subject to a material, a technology or an artistic practice. She uses 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 the social phenomena of our time).
Among his major works, we count the Kiss of the artist, which she presented at the FIAC, in 1977 or The Origin of War in 1989, resuming The Origin of the World by Gustave Courbet. In the 1990’s, she started a series of surgery-performances that she staged.
From 1998, she created the first Self-Hybridations, using digital technologies to mix her portrait with those of Pre-Colombians, Amerindians, Africans, or even masks from the Peking Opera and Self-Hybridations on commission such as that of Agatha Ruiz de la Prada.
The works in the series Women Who Cry are Angry are inspired by Picasso’s portraits of his then companion, Dora Maar, crying.
In this series, ORLAN hybridizes fragments of her face with portraits of Dora Maar.
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Women who cry are angry, 2021
26.00 €
