Orlan, The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan
The Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN, a new project that started in 1990, involves a series of plastic surgeries through which the artist transformed herself into elements from famous paintings and sculptures of women. As a part of her “Carnal Art” manifesto, these works were filmed and broadcast in institutions throughout the world, such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Sandra Gehring Gallery in New York.[14] ORLAN’s goal in these surgeries is to acquire the ideal of female beauty as depicted by male artists. When the surgeries are complete, she will have the chin of Botticelli’s Venus, the nose of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Psyche, the lips of François Boucher’s Europa, the eyes of Diana (as depicted in a 16th-century French School of Fontainebleu painting), and the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. ORLAN picked these characters, “not for the canons of beauty they represent… but rather on account of the stories associated with them.” ORLAN chose Diana, because she is inferior to the gods and men, but is leader of the goddesses and women; Mona Lisa, because of the standard of beauty, or anti-beauty, that she represents; Psyche, because of the fragility and vulnerability within her soul; Venus, for carnal beauty; and Europa, for her adventurous outlook on the future.[15]
Instead of condemning cosmetic surgery, ORLAN embraces it;[16] instead of rejecting the masculine, she incorporates it; and instead of limiting her identity, she defines it as “nomadic, mutant, shifting, differing.” ORLAN has stated, “my work is a struggle against the innate, the inexorable, the programmed, Nature, DNA (which is our direct rival as far as artists of representation are concerned), and God!”.[17]
“I can observe my own body cut open, without suffering!… I see myself all the way down to my entrails; a new mirror stage… I can see to the heart of my lover; his splendid design has nothing to do with sickly sentimentalities… Darling, I love your spleen; I love your liver; I adore your pancreas, and the line of your femur excites me.” (from Carnal Art manifesto)
“Sainte ORLAN” came from a character that I created for “Le baiser de l’artiste” from a text called “Facing a society of mothers and merchants.” The first line of this text was: “At the bottom of the cross were two women, Maria and Maria Magdalena.” These are two inevitable stereotypes of women that are hard to avoid: the mother and the prostitute. In “Le baiser de l’artiste” there were two faces. One was Saint ORLAN, a cutout picture of me dressed as Madonna glued onto wood. One could buy a five francs church candle and I was sitting on the other side behind the mock-up of the vending machine. One could buy a French kiss from me for the same amount of money one could buy a candle. The idea was to play on the ambivalence of the woman figure and the desire of both men and women towards those biblical and social stereotypes. Being showcased in the Paris International Contemporary Art Fair, the artwork was somehow both an installation and a performance,“[18] said ORLAN, in her interview with Acne Paper.
Little Bristling Soul 