Given the current political and social climate, I felt it was very important to create a work that advocates for peace and freedom. I wanted to use the symbol of the dove, which I have often worked with. I drew inspiration from a performance I did in Mérida in 2022.
For a photo shoot, photographer Pim Schalkwijk asked me to choose an object from a market, so I bought a white dove, which I released into the sky. I found that gesture powerful and poetic. I worked with the RMN’s casting workshops to bring this project to life. Using a 3D scanner, they created a virtual impression of my body—a digital mold—from which they fashioned a faithful reproduction out of marble powder.
Self-Hybridizations: Beijing Opera Masks, Sculpture, and Effigy, 2014
Reconstruction of the wheelbarrow created for the performance Selling Oneself at Markets in Small Pieces, 1976
Following her performance*Selling Herself in Small Pieces at the Markets*, ORLAN is exhibitingthe wheelbarrow she used. This performance involved selling black-and-white photographs of parts of her body—glued onto wood and cut out—which were hauled on a wheelbarrow through a farmers’ market, displayed like produce alongside stalls selling carrots, leeks, and potatoes…
There was also a sign listing the prices of his body parts, on which it read, “Does my body belong to me?” “Guaranteed pure ORLAN—no artificial colors or preservatives.”
The aim was to question the way in which fragmentary representation transforms our relationship with reality. This issue of objectification and body fragmentation raises questions about the right to dispose of one’s body in relation to the historical and social context, and the right to sell the representation of one’s body when selling one’s body is forbidden.
ORLAN & ORLANoïde, An artistic, electronic, and verbal striptease, “Artists and Robots” exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris, 2018
ORLAN created the ORLANOïde, a work in progress, in 2018 as part of the “Artists and Robots” exhibition at the Grand Palais, curated by Laurence Bertrand Dorléac and Jérôme Neutres. It is a humanoid robot with ORLAN’s face, equipped with artificial intelligence as well as collective and social intelligence.
The robot, equipped with a text generator and a motion generator, speaks with ORLAN’s voice, as she recorded 22,000 words that were then saved as separate MP3 files. The artist collaborated with Jean-Pierre Balpe, a true pioneer who posted an open-source text generator on his website. The installation consisted of the robot and two large LED screens displaying videos. One of the videos was a “deep learning theater”; the others consisted of filmed performances questioning our era: “I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, but it could be worse,” “No baby no, where are the environmentalists?” and “Petition Against Death.”
It’s a work that reflects his interest in hybridity, the body-machine, sculpture and interactivity.
Nicolas Gaudelet (Voxels Productions) was responsible for setting up the technical installation at the Grand Palais.
ORLAN is currently working with the company RASPIAUDIO to develop the robot for its retrospective exhibition at SESC Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil, curated by Alain Quemin.
ORLAN creates Un grand cru réinventé as part of a charity project for Gérard Garouste’s La Source. ORLAN covers a wine bottle with a silver cover, on which she pastes a photograph of the 4th Operation-Surgery-Performance, known as Operation Successful. In this image, the artist is shown eating real and fake grapes before the operation. She adds plastic grapes to crown the bottle in reference to her performance.
From Moderation to Excess, Inflatable Structure , 2012
In 2012, M HKA and ORLAN restaged the MesuRAGE performances, drawing on documents and production materials preserved in the ICC archives. ORLAN not only created two new MesuRAGE performances—one at the M HKA and one at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in Pittsburgh—but also produced a scaled-up sculpture of the performance that had taken place more than a quarter of a century earlier in Liège.
In this work, she combines two images that were essential to her in Liège: the bulldozer and herself, evoking the Statue of Liberty. She holds out a bottle filled with the dirt that had once accumulated on her white dress.
ORLAN’s works featuring drapery seem to draw inspiration from the Winged Victory of Samothrace—which ORLAN saw at a very young age on the walls of her school—as well as from Bernini’s Baroque folds. For ORLAN, it is an extraordinary example of strength and dynamism. In 2012, the artist created a series titled *Plis Mouvants* (*Moving Folds*), in which she features computer-generated Baroque drapery, continuing the themes of her *Étude Documentaire* (*Documentary Study*). This series of 36 works was produced as lenticular prints, which create a sense of movement and cause the folds to shift depending on the viewer’s position. In these works, ORLAN incorporates organic references to the moving, twisting body and to female genitalia.
Differences and Repetitions, Bodiless Dresses: Sculptures of Folds, resin, 2010
These four sculptures of folds follow in the footsteps of ORLAN’s work on Baroque drapery. Indeed, since the 1980s, ORLAN, draped in skilful folds, has been in dialogue with art history, and Bernini’s statuary in particular.
ORLAN created this new series for her exhibition at the Abbey of Maubuisson in 2009. Upon entering the order—often against their will—the nuns at this abbey, by donning the habit, the uniform, were required to accept the vow of silence and renounce their bodies and their pleasures.
ORLAN wanted to create bodiless dresses shown on a catwalk passing between Gothic columns as if it were a fashion show, with four sculptures made without molds. Resembling dresses with different surface appearances, they raise the question of copying and cloning, difference and repetition. The series was made without molds, so each sculpture is unique and has its own identity with infinite nuances. Only the final “coating” seems to differentiate them, but on closer inspection it’s possible to perceive that each fold has different curves and tensions, and that some folds are very organic, like the large front fold which resembles an enormous vulva.
They link periods (from Gothic to Baroque to Pop Art) and the permanence of representations. The absent body is at once that of the nuns who stayed at the abbey, of the artist, and of the models performing in the fashion shows.
Following in the footsteps of Baiser de l’artiste, ORLAN’s landmark performance presented at FIAC in 1976, these four pieces stigmatize stereotypical representations of women. They remind us, through the principle of BODY-SCULPTURE, long exploited in ORLAN’s work, that the body is eminently political. For the artist, this body can and must become the place where the freedom of the individual is expressed, and where these differences are embodied without constraint.
In 2009, ORLAN created a very contemporary self-portrait titled *Un ORLAN-Corps de crânes*. To create this work, the artist went to the Turin Clinic in Paris to have her skull scanned. The work was produced using software developed by the design group Sismos, which was connected to a 3D printer. As it turned out, the X-rays—which were taken solely for the purpose of creating the artwork—allowed doctors to detect a serious infection in her sinuses, which she was then able to have treated in time. Art is therapeutic.
Bump-Load, fiber optic light sculpture , 2009
ORLAN, who has often used her own body as material for her work, has designed an interactive sculpture in which she hybridizes her body with that of an African woman. This work is part of the African self-hybridization movement.
The sculpture is made of resin and contains coltan atoms on its fiber-optic, light-emitting base. ORLAN questions the dangers of the African soil from which coltan is extracted. This mutant being straddles the lines between techno-cyber and ethno-futurism.
In the installation, the illuminated parts of the sculpture react to the presence of visitors. When the public enters one of the installation’s three illuminated zones, the sculpture’s lighting program changes. The interaction is based on the contrast between the sculpture’s organic, living breath and the turbulent surface on the ground, decorated with patterns of coltan atoms. This mineral, used in electronics, is a new resource whose extraction is both a source of wealth and of major geopolitical conflicts, hence its presence as “jewels” within the body of the sculpture and as elements of instability on the base.
Bodyless Dresses: Sculptures of Folds, craft paper and wedding linens, 2002
It’s been said that baroque was classicism’s monster, and that women were man’s monster! Baroque’s detractors say it’s in very bad taste, that it’s “too much”.
In 1980, ORLAN travelled to Italy to study the Baroque and understand this aversion. This study trip enabled him to identify works of great importance in the history of art. The Baroque has been a major source of inspiration for ORLAN, who has worked on this theme for over ten years in her major series Etude Documentaire: le Drapé-le Baroque.
Judeo-Christian culture asks us to choose between good “or” evil. The Baroque invited the artist to reflect on this “or” and to use the “and”: good “and” evil, for in Bernini’s work, which inspired her so much, he shows us St. Teresa enjoying the angel’s arrow in an ecstatic “and” erotic ecstasy. Jacques Lacan wrote extensively about this in his book Encore.
Most of his works are based on this Baroque lesson.
ORLAN has been reading a lot since she was very young. It was one of his first openings to the world and to his emancipation. ORLAN creates two black and white photographic series. In the first, Littérature pour se tenir bien droite, ORLAN shows herself with piles of books she had in her studio.
The concept is to illustrate how reading has enabled the artist to stand up straight, to speak loud and clear, with content thanks to knowledge. This approach enabled him to emancipate himself from his often poorly-educated working-class social class, and reach a higher cultural and intellectual level. This is the beginning of its internal reconstruction.
The second series, ORLAN standing in her book straitjacket, shows how reading causes pain and prevents the body from moving. ORLAN presents herself with a wooden structure that she wears like a body prosthesis, to which she has glued books. This gesture shows the weight of reading on the body, on the shoulders.
ORLAN has created a new measuring instrument: the ORLAN-CORPS. ORLAN used this object during her MesuRAGES performances to measure streets named after historical celebrities (most of whom, of course, are men, with a few rare exceptions) and to measure cultural institutions such as the Guggenheim (Spain), the Saint-Pierre Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon, the Centre Georges Pompidou (France), the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh (USA), and the M HKA in Antwerp (Belgium). ORLAN also measured Le Corbusier’s housing complex in Firminy and the Vatican.
It’s a materialization of ORLAN-CORPS. It’s a wooden slat, the size of which corresponds to ORLAN’s waist. On one side is the inscription in red letters engraved on black “UN ORLAN-CORPS” and on the other side ten representations of ORLAN brandishing the rinsing liquid…
ORLAN displays this ORLAN-CORPS on a large white base, preserved and sacralized in a Plexiglas bell.
A year after her first series of Pre-Columbian Self-hybridations, ORLAN continues her reflection on non-Western beauty standards with the creation of the African Self-hybridations series, in memory of all the exciting study trips to Africa that so marked her youth.
This series consists of a series of black and white photographs based on ethnographic photography, the first photos in which the Other is photographed. ORLAN also creates a few color works, as well as resin sculptures of mutant characters, notably exhibited at the 1999 Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art: “Partage d’exotismes”, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin.
In her series, ORLAN creates a manifesto work “Femme Surmas avec Labret et Visage de Femme Euro-Stéphanoise avec bigoudis” (Surmas Woman with Labret and Euro-Stephanoise Woman’s Face with Curlers), which demonstrates that beauty is merely a question of dominant ideology in a historical and geographical location.
ORLAN depicts a woman with a huge labret, who is very confident and sure of her power of seduction because, in her tribe, the larger the labret, the more desirable the woman is. If we were to wear a labret here and now, in our Western culture, we would be labeled by everyone as “unkissable monsters”!
Documentary Study: *Le Drapé-Le Baroque*: *Skaï and Sky* and video. Installation and effigies of the White and Black Virgins of the Assumption on a video monitor playing pistols, photos glued to wood and cut out, 1985
ORLAN manipulates her various effigies, which are glued to wood and cut out, 1981
Documentary study: Le Drapé-the Baroque. Chapelle élevée à moi-m’aime (Staging for a Saint), sculPainting by Sainte-ORLAN in resin, Espace Lyonnais d’art contemporain, 1980,
ORLAN creates a resin statue of Saint ORLAN with beautiful drapery, a single bare breast and a finger raised to the sky for her installation La Chapelle élevée à moi-même(mise en scène for a Saint). It condenses various aspects of the artist’s reflections on the Baroque into an extravagant sensory installation. Built for the Made in France exhibition at the Espace lyonnais d’art contemporain, the monumental chapel measured 10m².
Both an installation and a performance space, the Chapel functioned as a work of art in the artist’s absence and as a set designed for the final performance. The entrance was decorated with artistically draped curtains, topped by a black-and-white photograph titled *Sein unique, Monstration phallique*. Once inside, the visitor was confronted with a personal theater composed of real, artificial, and virtual 3D elements: plastic flowers mixed with lilies and arums, a hologram depicting an angel, and live doves. Slabs of real and faux marble featuring photographs of ORLAN as the Madonna were laid on the floor in front of the statue, and a series of columns from the Lyon Opera House formed a semicircle around it. Behind the statue, she had placed a large halo made of mirrors—in fact, a video monitor showing the space and part of her sculpted face—accentuating the perspective effect created by the combination of architectural elements. The title refers to her own ironic canonization, her appropriation of the role of the Saint, and her self-designation of a place intended for a cult of the true and the false, blending the living and the artificial.
ORLAN holds up the rinse aid, effigie, photo glued to wood and cut out, 1980
This work consists of an effigy of ORLAN holding up the MesuRAGEs rinse solution. It is a black-and-white photograph glued to wood and cut out.
The MesuRAGEs protocol is very precise: ORLAN puts on a dress made from the sheets of her trousseau, always the same until it wears out, complete or almost.
After measuring the space determined with her body by lying on the floor and drawing a chalk line behind her head, then counting the number of times her body is contained within that space, she fetches water, removes her dress and washes it in public. She takes samples of this dirty water, which she places in vials that are then labeled, numbered and sealed with wax to make a small edition with a photo of the finding.
ORLAN then exhibits these samples in galleries and museums, along with the findings, photographs and videos, commemorative plaques, the life-size effigy of the last pose, the dress or the ORLAN-CORPS stallion, all concrete relics of these ephemeral moments. These performances put the body back into play. In life, you don’t just have one body, you have many different bodies.
ORLAN as the guardian of the ORLAN-CORPS, efportrait, photograph glued to wood and cut out,1980
This work is composed of two effigies of ORLAN on pedestals, each bearing an ORLAN-CORPS. It’s a black-and-white photo of her body glued to wood and cropped to scale 1 ORLAN-CORPS is a unit of measurement ORLAN created for the MesuRAGEs. ORLAN’s effigy shown wearing the MesuRAGEs dress made of trousseau sheets.
These two effigies “guard” an ORLAN-CORPS displayed on a pedestal and preserved by a Plexiglas bell.
The MesuRAGEs protocol is very precise: ORLAN puts on a dress made from the sheets of her trousseau, always the same until it wears out, complete or almost. After measuring the determined space with her body by lying on the ground and drawing a chalk line behind her head, she turns around, crawls forward and then counts the number of times her body is contained in this space using her ORLAN-CORPS unit of measurement, counting aloud with several witnesses. At the end, she fetches water, removes her dress and washes it in public, then stores the dirty water from the dress in a glass container.
ORLAN then exhibits these samples in galleries and museums, along with the findings, photographs and videos, commemorative plaques, the life-size effigy of the last pose, the dress and the ORLAN-CORPS stallion, all concrete relics and exhibits of these ephemeral moments. These performances put the body back into play.
Documentary study: Le Drapé-le Baroque: marble bust of ORLAN as Sainte-ORLAN, 1978
It’s been said that baroque was classicism’s monster, and that women were man’s monster! Baroque’s detractors say it’s in very bad taste, that it’s “too much”.
In 1980, ORLAN travelled to Italy to study the Baroque and understand this aversion. This study trip enabled him to identify works of great importance in the history of art. The Baroque has been a major source of inspiration for ORLAN, who has worked on this theme for over ten years in her major series Etude Documentaire: le Drapé-le Baroque.
Judeo-Christian culture asks us to choose between good “or” evil. The Baroque invited the artist to reflect on this “or” and to use the “and”: good “and” evil, for in Bernini’s work, which inspired her so much, he shows us St. Teresa enjoying the angel’s arrow in an ecstatic “and” erotic ecstasy. Jacques Lacan wrote extensively about this in his book Encore.
Most of his works are based on this Baroque lesson.
The marble sculpture entitled Documentary Study:The Draped-the Baroque represents the bust of ORLAN as Saint ORLAN, dressed as a Madonna with the sheets of the trousseau.
ORLAN has created many sculptures, using a wide variety of materials and techniques: resin, kraft paper, Carrara marble, 3D printing…
She has long been interested in the Baroque and has produced numerous documentary studies.
The Artist’s Kiss,portraits, photos glued to wood and cut out, base and accessories, 1977
*The Artist’s Kiss* ( 1977) is a large sculpture consisting of a black-painted pedestal. On one side stands a life-size black-and-white photograph of ORLAN, dressed up and draped like a Madonna.
For 5 francs, candles could be placed at Sainte-ORLAN.
On the other, a life-size black-and-white photograph of her torso, with a flashing red lamp positioned at breast level, and an arrow pointing to the slit where the five-franc coin could be seen falling down a transparent plastic esophagus to a pubis of the same nature.
It took place at the Grand Palais, and for that amount, ORLAN gave a real artist’s kiss—not a childish peck, but a French kiss…It resulted in a massive media scandal—so much so that the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) had never seen so many press articles categorized not under “FIAC” but under “the artist’s kiss.” ORLAN was also invited to appear on numerous television shows.
As a result, ORLAN was fired from the school where she was teaching to train socio-cultural animators. Her students immediately went on strike, creating songs in praise of the “artist’s kiss” and to her glory, demanding that she be reinstated, which never happened…
What followed was a terrible period when she had no money, no place to sleep and no food to eat. She lost her studio and many of her works because they had been sealed off.
ORLAN finally passed a competitive examination to become a teacher at a fine arts school in Dijon, and there were several happy endings. The sculpture was purchased by a public collection, the FRAC des Pays de la Loire. This work has traveled all over the world, including the United States in the Wak exhibition, and was requested by FIAC for its 30th anniversary. It was displayed at the glass-protected entrance, and on the large wall was written “Le Baiser de l’artiste l’oeuvre qui a le plus impactée l’histoire de la FIAC”.
“Dress of the MesuRAGEs,” a dress made from sheets from the trousseau, displayed under glass, 1977
This is the dress ORLAN wore during her MesuRAGEs performances, during which she followed a precise protocol. She puts on a dress made from the sheets of her trousseau, always the same until it wears out, complete or almost. After measuring the space determined by her body by lying on the floor and drawing a chalk line behind her head, and then counting the number of times her body is contained within this space using her unit of measurement the ORLAN-CORPS, she fetches water, removes her dress, washes it in public and collects the dirty water from the dress in a flask with which she poses like the Statue of Liberty.
ORLAN then exhibits these samples in galleries and museums, along with the findings, photographs and videos, as well as commemorative plaques, the life-size effigy of the last pose, the dress and the ORLAN-CORPS stallion, all concrete relics of these ephemeral moments. These performances put the body back into play.
The dress is displayed and inserted in a box between two glass or Plexiglas partitions.
Virtually all of ORLAN’s work can be read through the prism of dress, costume and cross-dressing. For the artist, clothing is a better interface than skin. You can’t choose your skin, but thanks to clothing, you can create a second skin, a calling card that reflects who you are, the image you want to project, your culture and your tastes.
A Small Series of Pillows: Many Reasons Not to Sleep, 1977
The Birth of ORLAN (without shell), effigy, photograph glued to wood and cut out, 1977
This work features an ORLAN effigy revisiting Sandro Botticelli’s famous painting The Birth of Venus (1484-1485), but without the shell.
ORLAN is naked, the shell represented by a pile of post-striptease trousseau sheets, like a solid chrysalis from which we don’t know what body will be born.
In this work, Botticelli used brushes to make the kind of beauty retouching that is currently possible with Photoshop: removing wrinkles, hairs, spots, pores, etc. ORLAN used this software to deconstruct the beauty Botticelli had created. It’s a black-and-white photo of his body glued to wood and cut to scale 1.
