ORLAN is written in capitals. “ORLAN is a war name,” says the artist whose entire work is a manifesto and who is known for performances and photographs that are chants of revolt. ORLAN speaks in capitals on capital subjects. This is my body, this is my art: such is the project of ORLAN, who considers her body as an image in the making. Over the course of her work, to better show that her body belongs to her, she does not cease to distort and transform it. Her face becomes like a collection of masks. ORLAN plays with her body, redrawing it like a piece of art, maliciously asserting: “I never recognize myself in a mirror.” Because her surgical performances toured the world, we have often spoken of ORLAN as a phenomenon, at the expense of her work, which its aesthetic and subversive power imposes. This exhibition presents, in a hundred photographs, installations, and films, what we believe are the capital works necessary to understand the path of a pioneering artist, who, since the beginning of the 1960s, changed the face of art and, particularly, of photography. ORLAN’s work asks us two fundamental questions. What is it to be a woman? What is it to be an artist? To the first, she answers that a woman needs to acknowledge her body. To the second, she states that to be an artist is to be one with your art. The artist is art into him or herself. A woman can become one. That is why ORLAN’s name is written in capitals.
Jérôme Neutres
Jérôme Neutres is an exhibition curator and the executive chairman of the Musée du Luxembourg.
ORLAN en capitales
From April 20 through June 18, 2017
As part of the Mois de la Photo du Grand Paris
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
5/7 Rue de Fourcy
75004 Paris
France
