4 questions for performance artist ORLAN

1.Tell us what you do and your beginnings.

I am ORLAN among other things, and as far as possible my name is written in capital letters because I don’t want to be lumped in, I don’t want to be lumped in like many artists. My beginnings started with painting lyrical abstraction and geometrical abstraction, sculpture, drawing and also performance.

2.What does your work aim to say?

I am an artist who is not subject to an artistic practice, a technique or a technology, whether current or ancient. What I want is to say important things for my time by questioning its social phenomena. I check all the information I can find on the I cross-check it, I analyse it, I synthesise it and then I ask myself the question in what material? In what style? What materiality? Will be the most interesting to reveal the initial concept and allow me to derange, to question this phenomenon.

For example I worked with aesthetic surgery but while using it I had implants usually put on my cheekbones to raise them on my temples which created two bumps on each side of my forehead to say how much beauty is only a question of dominant ideology here and now in a geographical and historical point and that it is all relative but we are imposed models which are for the most part unattainable.

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I also show that all civilisations have tried to fabricate bodies and at the moment it is two bumps that I asked for because they were not supposed to bring beauty but ugliness and to be outside the stereotypes of beauty of our time have become organs of seduction.

3.Where do you find inspiration for your art?

Ideas often come from reading or information and I often draw on other practices. I am very interested in science and medicine. For example, I have cultivated my cells and my intestinal, vaginal and oral flora to make bio art works, but I have also created sculptures in Carrara marble or in resin and in 3D printing.

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