Orlan

www.orlan.netORLAN was born on May 30th 1947 in Saint Etienne, France. She lives and works between Los Angeles, New York and Paris. In 2006-2007 she is invited as a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.From 1965, she has been active in photography, video, sculpture, installations, performance, etc. In 1977, her performance The Artist’s Kiss during the FIAC in Paris was a huge scandal. In 1978 she created the International Symposium of Performance in Lyon. In 1982, she founded the first on-line magazine of contemporary art, Art-Accès-Revue, on France’s precursor to the internet, the Minitel. She wrote the Carnal Art manifesto, and from 1990 to 1993 she conducted her series of 9 surgery-performances, filmed and broadcast in institutions throughout the world, among which the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Sandra Gering Gallery in New York.She has had several retrospectives: 2002, FRAC des Pays de la Loire, France, curator Jean-François Taddéi; 2002 Centro de Fotografia in Salamanca and Artium in Vitoria, Spain, curators Olga Guinot and Juan Guardiola; 2004, CCC, Tours, France, curator Alain Julien-Laferrière; 2004, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, curator Régis Durand. In 2007, Lorand Hegyi will organiza a retrospective, at the Modern Art Museum of Saint-Etienne, her native city, on the occasion of her 60th birthday.Currently, ORLAN is working on several series at the same time. The Self-Hybridations: in 1998 she launched a worldwide tour of differing standards of beauty in various civilizations and through history (in Pre-columbian, African, American-Indian and Chineese cultures). She hybridizes her new image (her face modified by surgery) to aesthetic values from other cultures digital photographs ensue. The Harlequin’s Coat will be created with skin cells cultivated in vitro, taken from ORLAN and from people with various skin colour and origin. Le Plan du Film (A shot a movie), initiated in 1988, is inspired by a Godard’s comment: « The only great thing about Montparnasse 19 is that is was not just made back to front, but represents the flip side of cinema » to produce a movie the other way around. ORLAN exploited her own image bank to produce a series of movie posters, trailers and soundtracks for fictitious films. She is now working on the actual production and distribution. She is also developing a clothing line and a perfume called “Le Baiser de l’Artiste”.