ORLAN, French artist, recognized for her bold approach, challenges social and political determinism, male supremacy and conventional aesthetic standards of beauty.

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To express your ideas, you use your body as a support for experimentation and visual support. It uses various means of representation such as sculpture, photography, performance, video, artificial intelligence, robotics, surgery and biogenetics.

Throughout her career she has received numerous awards and stands out as one of the most influential artists of her generation. In the context of his visit to Portugal and the exhibition at the CPS gallery at CCB, he presented his new series of works Femmage.  Inspired by figures such as Marie Curie, Empress Eugénie, Simone Veil, Hedy Lamarr or Rosa Parks, with whom it hybridizes, it questions gender stereotypes and celebrates the complexity of human identity and the achievements of these women admirable.

Curator Alexandra Silvano interviewed the artist.

 

< strong>Who is? ORLAN?

I am ORLAN, among others, and as far as possible. Every letter of my name is It's written in capital letters because I don't want to be classified, I don't want to be put on the line again. Writing in capital letters is necessary. how to write in inclusive writing, it is; political and feminist. For a woman, writing in capital letters means getting out of the shadows, getting out of imposed shyness, showing up. As I wrote in my autobiography “Strip-tease all about my life, all about my art”, published by Gallimard editions, being a woman is difficult. It is a biological and social calamity.

On Wikipedia they say ORLAN is written in capital letters, but they write it in lower case. This is It's a difficult fight to fight! Many consider me aperformance artist,but I claim that I am simply an artist. My performances often caused a scandal and therefore led to television programs and big headlines in the newspapers. I'm an artist who isn't in the world. It is subject to a material, an artistic practice, a certain way of speaking, a technique or technology, whether old or recent. I try to talk about subjects that I think are important for my time, questioning social phenomena, always with the necessary critical distance. É Of course, I do it after an evaluation and synthesis, questioning what the flesh, what the materiality and what style will be. more appropriate to present that idea, to make it come alive, to materially reveal the intended concept.

For me, the concept of the work is; your spine, just then the style. The materials are the flesh. I'm a conceptual artist who loves flesh, shape and color. I consider the body as a material among materials because I am a body, nothing more than a body, a whole body and it is my body. It's my body that thinks.

 

You were in Portugal for the first time in 1977. What was that experience like? ;ncia?

In August 1977 I was invited to go to Caldas da Rainha, as part of the International Art Meetings (1974-1977 ) organized by Jaime Isidoro and Egídio Álvaro. On that occasion I created important plastic works and performances on the street and in institutions. The existence of places that supported performance was very important. There was a time when the public and the artistic world were not yet receptive to this practice. My creation was to dress in my own nakedness and walk through public gardens wearing a photographic canvas dress with a representation of my naked body. The police called me an exhibitionist, but there was nothing they could do since I was dressed from toe to toe. head and had identification documents in his wallet.

I wanted to show the existence of a gap in public life, where people represented themselves instead of presenting themselves. In this sense, performance acts in real space by disturbing the relationship, by making the encounter with the other critical.

I also decided to sell in a retail market. vegetables, inside a cart, black and white photographic representations of parts of my body, exposed like a food product. The prices were presented on a sign that had written “Será that my body belongs to me? Guaranteed, pure ORLAN without dyes or preservatives”. Georges Poncet, a friend and excellent photographer, reminded me that we were violently attacked in the market by a group of reactionaries who followed us and the festival. I then decided to create a large wall installation with all the fragments of my body. It was about questioning the way in which fragmented representation transforms our relationship with reality. This problem of objectification and bodily division leads to question about the right to dispose of our body, in connection with the historical and social context, the right to sell the representation of the body, and the sale of the body is a question of the right to dispose of our body. prohibited. I also sold my kisses, my flesh placed in reliquaries and the photographic fragments of my body.

On the other hand, I was proposed to present a large installation at the José José Museum. Around my photo “ORLAN a large odalisque of Ingres”, which was part of the series Tableaux Vivants where the photograph was reproduced in different formats, arranged in the space under cushions hanging from the ceiling. My objective through this installation was to question the notion of scale inherent to the photographic medium and question the stereotypical feminine accessories of Ingres' painting.

During the inauguration ;no, I performed two performances. One was the action “ORLAN-Corps”, which I have practiced since 1974. It consists of using my body as a new measuring instrument. The idea of this performance was to take on Protagoras' theory “Man is a human being” the measure of all things”, declaring “The human is "I am the measure of all things", applying it in a very concrete way to a pseudoscientific method of measurement.

But, above all, I realized mine for the first time. in>performance, “The artist's kiss”. Based on a text I wrote “Faced with a society of mothers and marchers”, I questioned the saint and the prostitute, Mary and Mary Magdalene, two stereotypes of women of which I am the main example. It's very difficult to escape when you're in danger. woman.

This is This is the first simplified version of what was, during FIAC in October 1977, the performance that marks the turning point in my career.

On this trip I met excellent artists such as Albuquerque, Álvaro, Azevedo, the Puzzle… which I invited to my first international performance art symposium in Lyon in 1979.

 

Performative art was at the genesis of his career in the sixties, namely with performances – “ORLAN gives to light itself” (1964) and “Attempt to get out of the frame” (1965). Was the nudity of your body a strategy to draw attention to the status of women's bodies in current society? Was it the desire to break down barriers and rules that were absolutely emasculating in Western culture?

We can consider these two works performances not public, but they were designed for photography. I started my career with sculpture, drawing and painting, then I considered the body as a material among materials.

In the “Body Sculptures” I put my body on stage , often without identity, because my hair, or a mask, or my position, hid my face. What was important for me was to consider the body as a sculpture and to do poses that were not the usual ones and were outside the stereotypes of female seduction. So I took a lot of photographs in incredible, rebellious, and other positions… fully assuming my nakedness, my sensuality, my sexuality.

“ORLAN accouche d’elle-m’aime-A.I.M.E.” (Orlan gives birth your self-love-A.M.O.R.) is a manifesto work from 1964 where I assume this is the date of my birth, of my rebirth. That's when I started to create and recreate myself, to invent myself, to affirm something, to place myself among the slogans, and to realize that I had to free myself from impositions. I don't give it to you; It is not a child, but an androgynous artistic object that speaks of identity and otherness, of duplication, cloning and emancipation.

At the same time , my name ORLAN, is part of my reinvention. Everything I produced is It's a break with my parentage, with my father's name and my mother's body. I tried to emancipate myself from parental formatting, my social class and my environment.

“Attempting to get out of the picture” what I tried to do my whole life. For me it is It is a very important and premonitory work. The board represents the formatting, the ready-to-think, the achievements of childhood and our environment.

 

When he states, “The body is; politician… The body has become a place for public debate”. Where do you want to go with these statements?

I work on the status of the body in society, with all pressures: cultural, traditional, political and religious issues that are imprinted on bodies, and in particular on women's. I show how the body is; It is an artistic, political and social medium, especially the woman's body because the body is a human being. political, the private is political. political, everything we say, everything we do is political. political.

 

See Art as a utility?  

There are several types of artists. There are artists who make works to decorate apartments or to make money and others who are more dedicated to social and environmental causes and who try to change things, I am one of those artists.

All my life I fought privately and publicly for the emancipation of women and for changing mentalities and thus, participating in the construction of another world, a better world.

And I like it to quote Nietzsche saying “Art exists so that reality does not destroy us”.

 

By putting into debate the canons of beauty established by society, she argues that women have the right to reinvent themselves, to find personal solutions so that they feel good about their identity. Thus, a new chapter emerges in his career - Performative-surgical-operations, in which he resorts to surgery. aesthetic surgery, de-dramatizing its use in exploring new paths. Tell us about that experience.

Beauty does not exist in itself. É It is the result of our perception of the environment in which we were born and the environment we built, which makes us find something beautiful or not. In my African self-hybridization series, I worked from ethnographic photographs. I created a manifesto work by hybridizing myself with the representation of a black woman with a huge labret (lip ornament in the shape of a flat disc) that is the perfect piece of art. She is magnificent and very sure of her seduction, because at that time, in the history of her tribe, whoever had the biggest labret ended up with the most beautiful men. If today, we had labrets, everyone would move away from us, we would be outside the field of seduction, because beauty is a beauty. It's just a matter of imposing the dominant ideology on a geographical and historical point.

I created the “Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN”

em> or “New images called performative-surgical-operations” to separate aesthetic surgery from the concept of improvement and rejuvenation, and to perform a surgical operation that does not presuppose bringing beauty, but defect, monstrosity, undesirability.

The first idea of these surgical operations came when I read the book “La robe”,by Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni, Lacanian psychoanalyst, that was when I had the idea of fighting against the beauty stereotypes imposed particularly on women. I thought that in our time we began to have the means to bring the internal image to the external image. I'm not against cosmetic surgery, but against what we do with it. I used the technique of surgery to make it an invention of myself, a self-portrait, a self-construction.

For each performance I decorated the operating room ;river that became my studio; and I was clothed by a great creator. The performances were orchestrated with reading and whenever the operative process allowed, I made videos, photographs, drawings, with my blood and my fingers.

On November 21, 1993, in New York, the 7th surgical performance operation called “Omniprésence”. It was broadcast live via satellite at the Center Georges Pompidou and other museums around the world. I had implants placed on my temples that are usually placed to lift the cheekbones. If they didn't see me, they might really think I'm a monster, abominable, unwanted. These swellings, these horrors, have become organs of seduction…é It's my convertible!

 

What makes Carnal Art different from Body Art?  

I always refused to be associated with the group. Body Art that works with pain and resistance. The bodies are there Millennials suffer without there being a medicine to control the pain. For me the pain is It is anachronistic and suffering is not anachronistic. It is mandatory, it is mandatory. optional. É Of course I'm against this option, I'm in favor of bodily pleasure. Some artists with this option have created very interesting works (Marina Abramović, Jan Fabre…) but this is not the case. my approach. So, I wrote my Carnal Art Manifesto and on May 30, 1990, in a desacralized church called “All Saints”, in Newcastle, England, During an inaugural performative-ritual and reading my Manifesto, I announced my decision to perform “performative-surgical-operations”. The first condition with the different surgeons was, no pain.

 

He states that he develops most of his works based on what he reads. Creating for yourself is Is it a physiological need? Do you agree with Gilles Deleuze when he states that, “A creator is only do what you absolutely need”?

Texts, words, books have always been an integral part of my creations, under the influence of my father who consecrated books in a closed library ; key and key which I did not have access to. I've been reading since I was very little. It was one of my first openings to the world and to my emancipation. In “Littérature pour se tenir bien droite” I put myself on stage with stacks of books that I had in my studio. The concept was to demonstrate how reading allowed me to be right, to speak loudly and strongly, with content, thanks to knowledge. This initiative allowed me to emancipate myself from my working, poorly educated social class, to achieve higher cultural and intellectual capital. It was the beginning of my internal reconstruction. Now in “ORLAN debout dans son carcan de livre” (ORLAN in his straitjacket of books) I showed how much literature causes suffering and prevents the body from moving.

Thus, emphasizing all my “operations -performative-surgicals”, I read this extract from the book “La robe”: “... the skin is skin. Disappointing […] in life only We have skin […], but there is something wrong in human relationships because we are never what we have […] ; I have the skin of an angel, but I am a jackal, the skin of a crocodile, but I am a puppy, the skin of a black man, but I am white, the skin of a woman, but I am a man; I never have the skin of what I am, there is no such thing as what I am. exception to the rule because I am never what I have.”

 

 

In all civilizations and according to the parameters imposed on them. At that time, human beings were concerned about shaping their body and changing their appearance. These canons were not always related to the icon of beauty, but sometimes they were related to social, economic and prestige status.  Between 2000 and 2008, his reflection on beauty standards focused on non-Western cultures: pre-Columbian, African, American and Chinese, which gave rise to a series of “Auto-hybridization’ ;ão”. At this stage of your career, was it important to move away from Western culture and seek to understand the evolution of other peoples and cultures, with their very particular enigmas?

In effect, we can divide my work into three phases: the first phase is; an interrogation of my western Judeo-Christian culture; about all these codes and impositions. The second phase is a transition. These are the “performative-surgical-operations”, because they put all images back into play, including my own image with new images that are only available to me. o the result of these performances.

The third phase of my work is; the series of “self-hybridizations” which are the first post-operative works and which question non-Western cultures.

I have traveled a lot in my life to understand the world and fight against ethnocentrism and these works are the fruit of that. On the computer I hybridize sculptures, photographs and paintings from other civilizations that I admire to create a proposal, a new type of beauty. Hybridization is not possible. only 1+1, that's it. the idea that the forces of one and the other together, create a third work that could not exist without the other two.

I made pre-Columbian, African, American, Chinese and recently Mayan.

Bodily deformations are very important to me. All civilizations wanted to manufacture bodies. Of course, not only the bodies, but also what is happening. in the head. Cranial deformation, for example, is a common cause. for all social castes, both for the poor and the rich and also for men and women. You can do the experience if you have a baby, put bands on the baby's head. around your head, don't press too hard to avoid hurting it and when the fontanelle is closed, the skull has taken the position in which you placed the bands. So there is a different being, which has been transformed, modified. É It is a modification that we find in Africans, in pre-Columbians, in Egyptians. The museum experts told meWhat is this? If you look so far away for deformed skulls, there are others so close to you! ... Very surprised she said What? They answered me, The Merovingians did it! Note the region of Albi, in France, has the famous “Virgin with the Child of Rabastens”, where the skulls of the child and the virgin are deformed. So you see, we believe this is just happens to others… but we did the same. 

 

Je t’authorize à agrave ; être moi, je m’authorize à; être toi"  is a new series of images created in the continuity of “self-hybridization” and now presented in 10 editions ;es at CPS. Can we consider this phase of your career, a more direct and interventionist reinforcement for the fight for feminist causes, for the defense of women's rights and their recognition in society?

Currently I am inconsolable. I have the impression that my life was useless, because after some advances everything is coming to an end. if.

How is it that today it is not possible to show a body, a female breast on instagram or facebook publication is erased or blurred? For me it is aberrant.

Today we suffer from tyranny and censorship, as when Michelangelo's masterpieces were covered in the Sistine Chapel. How is it? Is it possible for abortion, contraception or marriage for all to be called into question? The Church pretends to be dissociated from the State, and in relation to the law; nudity, is it? It is very strange that those who believe in God allow themselves to interfere in the lives of others, especially if they accept that, “God created human beings by nature” your image”. So we need to showcase these masterpieces as a way of paying homage to God.

We do not ask those who do not want to make love before marriage not to get married, or who get divorced, or who have an abortion, or who are homosexual. The issue should be completely symmetrical and reciprocal so that no one interferes in the other's private life. But religions are made by men and for men in order to maintain patriarchy and misogyny, dividing them and creating communities that believe they hold the truth and wage war. 

The consequences are serious because feminism does not kill, but patriarchy does. I would love to be able to question other phenomena in society, but when we look at the world today, I feel obliged to continue my fight. É That's why I work on a new series of hybridizations “Je t’autorise à agrave; It's tre moi, je m'autorise à; être toi”, which is; also a phrase from one of the songs on my album. They are Femmages to the women in history that I admire and who, long before me, defended the same causes and, sometimes, in this fight lost their lives, or, were pioneers, many times forgotten, erased or underrepresented.

This gesture of hybridity towards the other, allows me, in all sorority, to give them an artist's kiss and create a meeting between women , despite the time that separates us. 

 

When making edits with the CPS, do you think it is important to establish proximity with the public who collect original graphic works? Are you interested in looking for new audiences and making your work more universal?

O. The situation has improved, but not enough for the representation of women in art. Ultimately, it is always the same: we find few women in the main market or in the ranking. The artistic system is It is a reflection of society and does not support women. Do you know what theGuerilla girls say? “Being a woman artist is difficult. It's fantastic because our career can explode at age 80! ”.

Male artists sell more and are more expensive. There are very few women at the top of the international market. Furthermore, many women hold other women back because we have been taught to hate each other and compete against each other. The #MeToo movement did it very well. But in France, as soon as feminism gives rise to one step, there is always a huge setback. There was even those 100 signatories, women who aimed to silence feminist struggles, without any compassion, without any sorority towards the women who started to speak out, and who were suddenly ridiculed. This is violence without a name for me!

That's why I was very happy with your initiative, Alexandra, in supporting women artists, exposing them and bringing them closer to the general public. I was very happy with this collaboration and with being able to meet the Portuguese public again. I have never made a work without thinking of it as a body that seeks other bodies to exist. I am always very concerned about the public, I don't want to leave them behind. I try to build bridges and frequently interact with him and question him about his thinking, his priorities.

 

We can say that ORLAN is Are you a multimedia artist who is interested in technology and seeks to use different techniques to realize your creations?     

I'm neither a technophile nor a technophobe, but I love living with the technological advances of my time. When I was a teenager, in my wildest dreams I would never have imagined that one day I would have an android in my pocket that would tell me, for example, where I was, how far from a museum I wanted to visit and who I could place a large amount of questions that most of the time adults don't know how to answer or answer me in an evasive way. From a very early age, I was interested in the beginnings of video, the minitel, precursor to the internet, and in that vein, I created works in augmented reality, but never to simply use a technology, but because this technology allows me to say something more assertive . For example, with augmented reality I digitized my body. Then I articulated it and programmed it to perform the acrobatics of the Peking Opera, because in the Peking Opera women are prohibited and it is men who play the role of women. In the same way, I created “attempt to leave the frame”. I wanted, thanks to my avatar, to leave the “self-hybridization” work of my face with the opera masks that serve as a QR code. You You can make my avatar appear, watch him do stunts, take photos with him and send those photos to the whole world. I use these new technologies solely to convey something essential about the work, but in another way. I'm about to put into practice my own Artificial Intelligence (AI) that could do works for me, according to my post-mortem protocol.

It seems very important to me as a woman, to question another phenomenon in society besides robotics and AI. In 2018, for the exhibition “Artists and Robots” at the Grand Palais, I created a robot, a sculpture that moves at will. which I called “Orlanoid”. It has artificial intelligence combined with collective and social intelligence. É It consists of a movement generator and a text generator. The robot looks like me, speaks with my voice and reads; simultaneously all texts generated by a large text generator. This is a work in progress and I can take it to my conferences so that the robot can simultaneously translate everything I say into English or Portuguese. Thanks to AI, answers all questions from the public, as if it were me, according to my tastes, my opinions, my life.

 

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If Art is It is outside the law, of resistance, it imposes no limits. Today is It is more difficult for an artist to create, since there is an infinite number of techniques, materials and easy access to art. information?  It's Expectant about the future?

At the time I started working we didn't have easy access to the internet. information. I didn't know or knew very little about the other artists in the performance. During this time, it is I need to keep in mind that there was no internet, magazines were scarce, there were few spaces where it was possible to see contemporary art. Before the 1980s, contemporary art was just in its infancy, and this was particularly true in France and especially outside of Paris.

For example, when the performance artist Valie Export invited me to giving a conference in Berlin, at the university where she was a professor, after the beginning of my career in 1996, we were very surprised when we realized the numerous similarities between some of our performances< /em> held more or less on the same dates as well as the fact that we both wrote our names in capital letters. However, when she adopted this spelling, she had never heard of me and I had never heard of her either.

Today, we are all interconnected wherever we are. É formidable! And all technical opinions are always an added value, but it all depends on how we use them, the quality of the artist and their concepts.

  

Parallel to the During his career as an artist, he has shared his knowledge and achievements in numerous conferences at art schools and universities. The contact and proximity with younger people ends up being a stimulus for your work. Considers that the general public is more receptive to understanding of your work?

Teaching for me was like getting to the other side of the barrier. A revenge for the woman who became completely alone and very proud, against winds, tides and outside her social class, outside of what was destined for her.

In the beginning, I gave private classes in visual arts, to children and teenagers. Then, body expression, diction and theater for young people. Later, painting in various organizations. I taught art therapy, worked with elderly people, prisoners, students at fine arts schools. I frequently do workshops and many conferences all over the world. When I taught at national higher schools of fine arts, I loved giving the floor to students, getting into their logic and then helping them by giving them all the information I had about their problems, offering them research avenues outside of rigorous and conventional teaching. Inform them about the history of art and the art world. I could speak to a class for hours, so much so that my students called me “The Fidel Castro of art! ”

I taught a lot and loved this work of constant questioning, transmission, heated exchanges and lively debates. É It's true that they recognize me on the street, whether on the metro, in Paris, in Macau, in Luçon, in Shanghai or in Craponne-sur-Arzon. Narcissus is not offended! And I really like having time to talk to people who approach me, who want to take photos and want an autograph, because I raised so many issues that I have to show my face, I can't escape. Many people recognize me and know my works, because my work appears on the programs of schools, high schools and universities. I'm glad to see that today is It's difficult to ignore my work since I cover the body, performance, hybridization, baroque, biotechnology or artificial intelligence and robotics…  furthermore, it is not It is common in the visual arts for artists to be recognized as celebrities on the street.   

 

 

Summoning once again your boundless originality, what message would you like to share with the public? ;blico?

Im systematically and uninterruptedly rethinking myself, prefabricating myself, reinventing myself. Thinking is always think against yourself. I have always wanted to emancipate myself and then emancipate myself again from my own previous emancipation and I wish everyone to do the same. May they be critical, curious and always alert.

 

Photo: ORLAN