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Orlan (born 1947) is a French multi-media artist who uses sculpture, photography, performance, video, 3D, video games, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and robotics as well as scientific and medical techniques such as surgery and biotechnology to question modern social phenomena. She has said that her art is not body art but 'carnal art.'

Orlan is not the artist's original name, but one she gave herself at the age of 15 in 1962. This is an indication of how important identity has been to Orlan's life. When Orlan was writing a check she noticed the letters of her name stood out as MORTE (dead). She realized that she no longer wanted to play dead! She wanted her name to have a positive connotation, hence why she changed it.

There are many suggestive connotations associated with the name Orlan. There is 'Orlan-do' from Virginia Woolf's famous novel, Orlon the synthetic fibre, Orlane the perfume, and Saint Joan of Arc/the Maid of Orleans. What inspired Orlan to change her name lies in the purpose of her work.

Biography
Since the 1960s, Orlan has questioned the status of the body and the political, religious, social, and traditional pressures that are inscribed in it. Specifically during the 1970s and 1980s, Orlan called the conventional status of women into question. Her work denounces the violence done to the body and in particular to women's bodies, and thus engages in a feminist struggle. She makes her body the privileged instrument where our own relationship to otherness is played out. This work of Orlan on the body is done in particular by the means of photography.

In 1977, Orlan performed Kiss of the artist (Baiser de l'artiste), during the International Fair of Contemporary Art (FIAC ), in the Grand Palais in Paris. Orlan displayed a life-size photograph of her own nude torso, which she sat behind. The life-sized photograph was turned into a slot machine. A spectator would insert a coin and could see it descending to the groin before being awarded a kiss from the artist herself. The installation created a scandal that cost the artist her teaching position.

Her manifesto of "carnal art" (Manifeste de l'Art Charnel) is followed by a series of surgical operations- performances that she carries out between 1990 and 1993. With this series, the body of the artist becomes a place of public debate. Orlan deconstructs the beauty concept at a time when many women are turning to aesthetic surgery as part of a new beauty standard. Carnal art targets the hypocrisy of society splitting the female into Madonna and whore. It also celebrates modifications made to a body as well as the opened up body. Her performances involve music, poetry, and dance. Videos of the surgery are for sale in the art market as are samples of her flesh and blood. The performance is also interactive where participants insert needles into Orlan's skin or slice open her lips all while Orlan remains silent.

Orlan also explores the use of new technologies in the arts.

In 1982, with Frédéric Develay, she created the first online magazine of contemporary art, Art-Accès-Revue, on Minitel. This magazine invites international artists working in situ and/or with conceptual problems to create original works specially conceived on Minitel, by Minitel, and for Minitel. Many of the works play with the Videotex graphic style or ironically imitate Minitel services (Bernar Venet, Vera Molnár, Ben, François Morellet, Daniel Buren...) The works are accompanied by critical essays. The service also regularly gives the floor to the public. A public presentation of this database took place at the Centre Pompidou during the exhibition Les Immatériaux by Jean-François Lyotard. The Art-Access service has been distributed free of charge by the city of Metz server: MIRABEL.

The Reincarnation of Sainte- Orlan
In 1990, Orlan began The Reincarnation of Sainte- Orlan. It involved 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.

Orlan picked these characters, "not for the canons of beauty they represent... but rather on account of the stories associated with them." Many would also say that Orlan critiques the beauty industry by turning herself into a "monster" with her use of cosmetic surgery and her willingness to be mutilated by the audience. While exposing the horrors with cosmetic surgery, Orlan also mocks the surgical theater by turning the operating room into a carnival. Orlan defines cosmetic surgery 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!". In an interview with Acne Paper, Orlan stated: 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.

In the 2000s
In 2001, Orlan orchestrated a series of filmic posters, "Le Plan du Film," with various artists and writers. She collaborated in 2008 with the Symbiotica laboratory in Australia, resulting in the bio-art installation "The Harlequin's Coat."Part of Orlan's ongoing work includes "Suture/Hybridize/Recycle," a generative and collaborative series of clothing made from Orlan's wardrobe and focusing on suture: the deconstruction of past clothing reconstructed into new clothing that highlights the sutures.

In June 2013, she filed a complaint against Lady Gaga. For Orlan, the American star, in the album Born This Way released in 2011 is inspired by the artist without quoting her. The beginning of the video clip of the homonymous song shows Lady Gaga with implants similar to those of Orlan and the face of Lady Gaga beheaded recalls the work Woman with head created in 1996. Her lawyer was asking for compensation of 31.7 million dollars. The hearing was set for July 7, 2016, at the Tribunal de la Grande Instance de Paris. A first verdict was announced against Orlan but the artist decided to appeal. In May 2018, the Court of Appeal of Paris rejected Orlan by confirming the absence of the parasitic nature of the video clip.

Recent works

 * Orlan et l' Orlanoïde strip-tease artistique électronique et verbal,2018, Exhibition Artistes et robots, Grand Palais, Paris, France: a humanoid in the image of Orlan (but exposing its mechanical armature) sings or speaks using her voice, dances, using information gathered collectively and in conjunction with deep learning algorithms
 * Tangible Striptease en Nanoséquences, 2016, Centre des Arts, Enghien-les-Bains and Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France : Orlan, in collaboration with Mael Le Mée, created a performance in which the Orlan-corps, in the form of biological samples and cultures of its microbiota, circulated among the spectators
 * Expérimentale mise en jeu, 2015: video game in which the viewer, by means of MYOS bracelets, controls an avatar of the artist. The aim of the character is to restore works that have been destroyed, with each progression in the restoration, the central character builds his humanity and finally, the ruined landscape is rebuilt. This game is based on the idea that "killing is not playing"
 * Self-hybridations Masques de l'Opéra de Pékin, Facing Design et réalité augmentée, 2014 : the artist's most recent series of self-hybridizations in which she hybridizes her face with typical Pekin Opera masks. This interactive photographic series uses augmented reality. The viewer, by scanning the work as a QR code, sees appear on his screen an avatar of Orlan performing acrobatics of the Pekin Opera, he can then photograph himself or other spectators with the avatar share and share his pictures online
 * La liberté en écorchée, 2013 : this 3D video shows the artist's body modeled in 3D. It is a manifesto insisting both on the "flayed" nature of artists and on his responsibility concerning this notion of freedom to be constantly defended.
 * Robes sans corps, Sculptures de plis, 2010: sculptures of drapery without body, in gold leaf resin or platinum

Emblematic works
Some of her emblematic works include :
 * Orlan accouche d'elle-m'aime, 1964: In this black and white photography, Orlan gives birth to a character like an inert and androgynous body, neither man nor woman. This work symbolizes the artist's desire to give birth to herself, to invent a new identity. This series is part of the Corps-sculptures. It is created a few months after an abortion of the artist.
 * MesuRages (1974-2011): The name chosen for this series of actions insists on the word "Rage" since the artist refuses to play the role that one wants to impose on her. Using the " Orlan-body", a new unit of measurement, the artist will measure St. Peter's Square in Rome, Chateaubriand Street in Nice, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the St. Peter's Museum in Lyon, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp and the Guggenheim Museum in New-York. On the Place Saint-Lambert in Liège, Orlan's "MesuRage" takes on a political character, since the artist was invited by an association campaigning for the defense of this square, which is threatened by an urban planning operation.
 * Le Baiser de l'artiste: A 1977 performance at the Grand Palais, where the International Contemporary Art Fair was taking place. Seated behind life-size photography of her naked bust, treated like an ATM, Orlan calls out to the public: "Come closer, come to my pedestal, that of the myths: the mother, the whore, the artist" . On a black platform, she monetizes her kisses, while to her right another photographic silhouette pasted on wood shows her as a Virgin to whom one can, for the same price, offer a candle. This action caused a great scandal and was highly publicized. This work was exhibited in 2008 in the exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C, the Vancouver Art Gallery, MOCA Gefen in Los Angeles, and the P.S 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.
 * Le Drapé-le Baroque (1979-1986): This series of photographs constitutes a complex and rather suggestive iconography on the spiritual level, with characters inspired by Christian iconographies, such as Saint Orlan, the white virgin, and the black virgin. These works are a continuation of Orlan's quest for female identity, her critique of religious pressures and her staging of the Baroque.
 * L’Origine de la guerre: In 1989, is a counterpart to Gustave Courbet's famous painting, The Origin of the World. A phallus spread legs with head, arms, and legs cut off, taking up and "transvestising" Courbet's feminine iconography, illustrates the title in a gesture that does not detract from feminism.
 * La Réincarnation de sainte Orlan: Begun in 1990, or Images / Nouvelles Images, comprises a series of nine cosmetic surgery operations/performances, during which Orlan makes her flesh the material of her work and takes as its basis the representations of women in Western art. Each of Orlan's carefully planned and executed operations/performances are staged and controlled by the artist. Through these interventions, she "put the figure on her face." She chooses the literalness of the performance to speak about the violence done to the body, in particular to women's bodies, and to question the models of beauty. For example, Orlan had implants usually put to raise the cheekbones on each side of the forehead, creating two horn-like bumps on the temples.
 * Omniprésence (November 1993): Orlan meets Dr. Marjorie Cramer in New York, a surgeon who accepts the artistic and feminist objectives of her project: the radical transformation of her face by implants in the temples. The objective is to divert plastic surgery from its usual objectives and to question the standards of beauty. This operation/performance is broadcast live in her exhibition at the Sandra Gering Gallery in New York, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, at the Mac Luhan Center in Toronto, at the Banff Multimedia Center, and on CNN.
 * Ceci est mon corps…Ceci est mon logiciel… Is a performance conference on May 30, 1990, accompanied by a book and a CD-Rom. She develops there the Manifesto of the carnal art (Manifeste de l'art charnel)
 * Le plan du film (2001): Following the example of Jean-Luc Godard, who spoke of the production of a "film in reverse", Orlan starts from the creation of cinema posters to then define the casting, the script, a promotional evening at the Fondation Cartier for contemporary art, a soundtrack by the group Tanger, the trailer of the film, the producer. She exhibited all of this work at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 at the Hôtel Martinez.
 * Self-hybridizations(1998-2002): Digital images featuring the artist in physical metamorphoses (virtual this time) questioning the canons of beauty of other civilizations (Amerindian, pre-Columbian and African). Using computer processes, Orlan transforms her image in a way that brings her closer to pre-Columbian (such as the deformation of the Mayan skull), African, Egyptian, Amerindian, and Merovingian cultural traditions. This work is in the continuity of her previous works where she denounced the social pressures that our society inflicts on the body and appearance. Here she stages the absurdity of these criteria, which are opposed according to the time or the civilization in which one lives. The image of the ideal body becomes completely abstract and ironic.
 * Le Manteau d'Arlequin: It is an installation mixing art and biotechnologies, created with living cells of Orlan, cells of different origins, and even animal cells. This work is inspired by Michel Serres' text, Laïcité, placed as a preface to his book Le Tiers Instruit. Michel Serres uses the figure of the Harlequin as a metaphor for crossing, accepting the other, conjunction, intersection. Le Manteau d'Arlequin develops and continues to explore the idea of crossing using the more carnal medium of skin. It also questions the relationship between biotechnology and artistic culture. This installation has been presented in Perth, Liverpool, Luxembourg.
 * Question de miroir (1993): This series focuses on vanity and narcissism. It was taken prior to Orlan's surgery performance Omnipresence. Instead of using makeup to cover her face, Orlan uses a flesh colored putty substance.

Orlan's works can be found in the collections of various museums, including the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Maison européenne de la photographie, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, the Museum of Modern Art, as well as various private collections, including the François Pinault Collection.