Presentation Overview

Orlan prescribing herself as a Carnal Artist acts upon her own body by abstracting the image of it and going against nature by opposing it and the conventions that exercise constraint on the human body. She also goes against society in her alterations by questioning whether are self representations conform to an inner reality or whether they are actually fabricated for marketing purposes, in the media and society at large especially in the conventions affiliated with beauty. In her work she goes against the idea of ‘God’ in the biblical sense, transforming the body into a language “the flesh made word” as opposed to the word made flesh. Orlan uses her body as a vessel, and she detachs herself as a personality from it.

Orlan through her work modifiys the body, she alters her image commenting on the aesthetics of beauty in society and this can be seen in her nine performative operations acting as a portraits of a potential future of humanity. Orlan detaches herself from her body and responds to the potential in technology enhancing and evolving the body by going against nature’s limitations. She perceives the acceptance of one’s natural self to be a primitive concept, given the technology of our time, and therefore does not believe that nature must be abided.

Orlan has undergone nine operations to remake her appearance commenting on the varying types of beauty which is not necessarily prescribed by the media, and the series as a whole is entitled The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan (this in reference to another art work of Orlan’s entitled Saint Orlan) or Image-New Images. Of the operations performed so far, one altered her mouth to imitate that of François Boucher's Europa; another an appropriation of the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa; and another imitates the chin of Botticelli's Venus. These models were chosen for their mythical and symbolic connotations as well as their beauty. Venus was chosen for fertility and that being symbolic of sexuality and beauty and "Europa because she looked to another continent, permitting herself to be carried away into an unknown future” . Yet another surgery, the widely publicized "Omniprésence," November of 1993, implanted protrusions in her forehead to mimic the protruding brow of Mona Lisa. the end result was two symmetrical horns.

In the plastic surgery operations/performances Orlan deals with the problem of dissection, peeling, and unveiling which feminist theorists have critiqued as masochistic compared to the sexual sadism of the anatomist's ruthless penetration -- the thrust of the male creator. But her work is also a task of incorporating the image of goddesses from mythology and art history -- such as Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and the goddess Diana -- as a computerized process of hybridization. Orlan explains: "...I devised my self-portrait using a computer to combine and make a hybrid of representations of goddesses from Greek mythology. I chose them not for the cannons of beauty they are supposed to represent, but rather on account of the stories associated with them. Diana was chosen because she refuses to submit to the gods or to men, she is active and even aggressive...(Goode, 1997)”