Artist Research
Orlan is a french artist how mainly works with her body, although she has used many different mediums within art. Orlan uses her body to make art, but she would not consider herself as an body artist. ‘She says that her art is not body art, but rather ‘carnal art,’ which lacks the suffering aspect of body art.’ I found this quote on Wikipedia. this shows her intent was not just to create art with her body but to really show something new, another creative choice she made was to changed her appearance from a website called Artnet I found a quote they have of orlan talking about this modification ‘ “I have been the first artist to use aesthetic surgery in another context—not to appear younger or better according to the designated pattern. I wanted to disrupt the standards of beauty,” she explained ‘. i found this quote interesting as it shows how she wants to push standers instead of becoming one.
orlan’s works are similar to cindy shirman a photographer whos main subject to photograph is herself, her works look closely at herself
her motivations can be seen as the same as a person who gets body modifications, some people do it to get out of the everyday beauty standards while others do it to become more of their selves, society as a whole tries to drag us into being the ‘perfect normal’ standard of beauty, but some people want to get out of that and do their own thing. therefore tattoos are still seen as completely acceptable and looked down on just not as much. in my project i want to move on from just looking at tattoos to looking how tattoos are in society and how people with body modifications can feel with society, also how i feel.
within this video, orlan talks about the concept of her works and why she did them, not all her works are like mine but the way she thinks about her works and wants other people to think about it is like mine. she talks about how people find talking about body modifications can make you ‘unfuckable’ but if you meet her or the person that can change. this is like my works, how society wants everyone to be alike and if you change yourself to be more you it can make you ‘unfuckable’. equally this can be completely the other way around, with fake boobs and bbl (but lifts). another thing she speaks on is how women where more open to kiss her than men, i found this quite an interesting point, and possible shows how women find it easier to open up rather than men.
although i wont be taking inspiration from her actually work i wanted to look more into another artist concept around body modifications, i feel its really interesting about how she uses her whole body and her art to try and convey her ideas.