"This is My Body... This is My Software..." 1993/2007
Collection of the National Museum of Art, Osaka
(C)ORLAN/ADAGP, Paris & JASPAR, Tokyo, 2012
ORLAN has been staging plastic surgery on her own body as performances. Footage of her operations was transmitted live via satellite to venues including a New York gallery and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Next to creating works out of pieces of meat cut off in the operations, she has been exhibiting portrait photographs documenting transformations such as scars and swellings after surgery.
In operating rooms that are usually decorated with Venus and Diana accessories, ORLAN herself performs ceremonies reciting texts from Eug辿nie Lemoine-Luccioni's "La Robe" (1983) while her body is cut up by technology and knives.
On display at this exhibition are eight out of a total of 14 photographic works documenting a string of performances.
ORLAN
Born 1947 in Saint Etienne, France. Performance artist. Has been exhibiting the process of plastic surgery on her own body as "carnal art" since the 1990s. The operations she undergoes on her own face are not for the sake of beauty as a generally accepted practice, but they represent a radical challenge of a lasting imperative social taboo. ORLAN has shown her work at numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, and was awarded a Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite medal from the French Ministry of Culture in 2010.
