Dinner with ORLAN, a Feminist Icon
ORLAN. Still from La Réincarnation de Sainte ORLAN, 1990. Photography courtesy of Divulgação.
“I do not know where she is now,” ORLAN responds when I ask if she stayed in touch with the New York surgeon who assisted her in creating La Réincarnation de Sainte ORLAN (1990-1993), the ground-breaking series of live broadcast plastic surgeries. ORLAN wears glittering jewelry to accentuate her antlers—the implants above her eyebrows, an artwork that is an integral part of herself. “You know who I am. I want to know more about you,” ORLAN says to me in her deep, penetrating voice as we sit down with her gallerist Maëlle Ebelle from Ceysson & Bénétière. I have curated a group show there, Clairvoyant, that includes her work. We cover children (ORLAN says “ECO-CIDE”) and internet dating (Ebelle suggests “sapiosexual seeking real connection”), and we go through my Rolodex as ORLAN wants to meet art professionals during her three-week stay in New York. Kilometers of text have been written about this legendary feminist transhumanist artist, but what surprised me was her vibe. She has an enigmatic presence—warm, intuitive, but sharply on point. She is hungry—craving to learn more, to share more of her work, and to push her own limits and those of the people around her.
ORLAN listens to me intently. When I say I sub-specialize in performance art, her response is simply: “I do not believe in it. What is that?” Par contre epitomizes French culture; “on the other hand” signals that another point of view will be aired, and there is always a debate to be had. Questioning at its best leads to destabilizing the patriarchy and makes space for new thought; at the very least, it kickstarts a spirited dinner conversation. ORLAN loves both and keeps those around her on edge by being opinionated, deeply curious, and beyond all: vocal. ORLAN does not believe in her categorization. All of her thoughts, actions, and her physical body in its entirety are her art—she works with performance, photography, new technologies, mediation, and through collaborations; she has also created a new genre of art—carnal art.
Before we met, I watched news footage from The Artist’s Kiss (1977), in which visitors to the art fair FIAC were invited to put 5 francs in a vending machine shaped like a torso in exchange for a French kiss from ORLAN—a commentary on womanhood, labor, and capital with religious undertones. In conjunction, thinking about Mary Magdalena, she added “Sainte” to her name. It was scandalous on multiple levels and got her fired from her teaching job. Parts of this piece are included in her current retrospective at The Opening Gallery. When we meet, she smiles at me with her eyes and her whole face, sharing her light. I realize that with ORLAN, there is no boundary between where she ends and where her art begins—in her presence, I feel that she embodies saintly qualities.
ORLAN. Still from La Réincarnation de Sainte ORLAN: Omniprésence, 1993. Courtesy of diy artem, YouTube. See video extract here.
We share Peruvian dishes. “No one wanted to work with me, and many male physicians were patronizing,” she explains as she plops a piece of lobster on my plate. She is talking about the search for a plastic surgeon to help develop La Réincarnation de Sainte ORLAN. Between 1990 and 1993, she worked on a series of nine surgery performances with different doctors, altering her appearance with elements from Baroque, Christian-Judeo, Hindu, and Greek mythological traditions. She partnered with designers like Paco Rabanne and Lan Vu to dress the surgical teams while she was under the knife, often reading texts or inviting others to perform. The artist chose to remain awake with medicine to manage the pain and to participate fully in her transformation. In 1993, for her seventh surgery, Omniprésence, she worked with Dr. Marjorie Kramer in New York to add, in her words, “monstrous and ugly” elements—the over-brow implants with a material usually used to enhance cheekbones. It was broadcast over satellite links to museums and galleries around the world, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Banff, and Sandra Gering Gallery.
ORLAN explains that she was shunned by many in the French art world afterward—“Imagine Dr. Kramer,” I say. ORLAN was operating on a different plane, not ahead of her time but rather cutting through it by critiquing the beauty industry that she participated in. I say: “Someone should track her down to record an oral history.” “I would like to find her again,” ORLAN nods in agreement—in French, mind you. Although ORLAN observes the dominance of the English language, calling it the new, or de facto, Esperanto, she speaks only French. “Tout tout tooouuuut,” she emphasizes the last all, as detailed in her new biography Striptease, which she is promoting during her visit to New York. (Except for her lost copyright dispute with Lady Gaga, who was seen with prosthetics similar to ORLAN’s implants, an “unacknowledged tribute” to the carnal artist’s overall conceptual framework, in the music video Born This Way. “They made me sign an NDA,” ORLAN sighs.)
ORLAN. Corps-sculpture sans visage en mouvement dansant avec son ombre n°6, 1967. Inkjet print. 140 x 120 cm. 55.1 x 47.2 in. Edition 2/5. Courtesy of C&B.
Installation view. Clairvoyant at Ceysson & Bénétière. (Left) Katya Grokhovsky. Hers, 2024. Acrylic, oil pastel, wall paint, mother's used apron, burlap, distressed tarp, on canvas. 72 x 48 in. (Right) Bianca-Abdi Boragi. Hourglass, 2023. Colored ink and dry pastel on paper. 11 x 14 in. ©Adam Reich. Courtesy of C&B.
We set a date for a book signing at Ceysson & Bénétière, and when that date comes, I am late. “Were you not being good?” she asks me, eyes asparkle, as I greet her with la bise (an air kiss for each cheek). “Always,” I laugh. The gallery's two exhibition rooms are electrified by the presence of ORLAN’s photograph and the painting Hers (2024) by Ukrainian artist Katya Grokhovsky. Whereby ORLAN’s Corps-sculpture sans visage en mouvement dansant avec son ombre n°6 (1967) posits her body as a sculpture, Grokhovsky’s painting, dripping with yellow and turquoise paint, incorporates an apron from her mother, majestic in its evocation of pain and reverence. I overhear Grokhovsky telling a visitor that she often teaches ORLAN’s surgery performances and that they are like nothing anyone had seen before, merging fashion with art and spectacle. As visitors get their books signed, ORLAN poses for photographs. “With the flash,” she says, reaching out her arms—one of her signature poses.
ORLAN has always been at the forefront. She launched the first online magazine, Art-Accès Revue, on the Minitel, a French collaborative pre-internet IT platform run on the phone line. She also founded and organized the International Symposium of Performance and Video in Lyon, an early performance festival. And she has always taught—another artist in the show, Bianca Abdi-Boragi, was her student and remembers a class where ORLAN said: “DO NOT CUT OR HURT YOUR BODIES.” Operating differently from the genre of body art, ORLAN’s work is not about endurance or pain, but love and growth. I pick up that she likes to have people around her: to extract, discuss, and help develop—“My table at home in Paris seats 14, so we are often 13 at the table,” she says when we are talking about an odd number of guests (a ridiculous rule of etiquette that she does not adhere to).
ORLAN. Je t'autorise à être moi, je m'autorise à être toi (Simone Veil). Photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
At our event at Ceysson & Bénétière, I speak about the work of the artists in the exhibition: Grokhovsky, Abdi-Boragi, Yasmine Anlan Huang, Ayana Evans, Linnéa Gad, Katie Hubbell, Anna Ting Möller, and Hanae Utamura. I urge the audience to think about time, memory, taking hold of and letting go of control, chance, intuition, and working across mediums—which these artists all do deftly. It is a strong group. ORLAN sits beside me at a makeshift table of books, holding a mask with a printed vagina in front of her face—“May I introduce my work?” she interjects, at a good moment.
“THE BODY IS EVERYTHING.” “ABORTION IS NOW PROTECTED AS PART OF THE FRENCH CONSTITUTION THANKS TO MACRON. I WANT TO APPLAUD SIMONE VEIL WHO PAVED THE WAY.” She says in a clear and measured tone. In France, abortion was legalized in 1975. Shortly thereafter, in 1978, ORLAN had a life-saving emergency abortion to end an ectopic pregnancy. Building on her bodywork but also unmasking its process, she remained conscious during the surgery and had it filmed. Later, during a second dinner with ORLAN, Grokhovsky, Ebelle, two other curators, and myself, the topic of abortion comes up. One curator expressed her sadness about having an abortion at the age of 17 because her partner did not want to get married. “You were lucky,” I exclaim. When the woman does not back down, ORLAN rolls her eyes: “Go to jail”—for placing such importance on the man. In her third current New York exhibition at NYU’s Maison Francais Je t'autorise à être moi, je m'autorise à être toi, ORLAN has superimposed herself with portraits of female trailblazers Simone de Beauvoir, Ada Lovelace, Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, Agnès Varda, and, importantly for this context, the French politician Simone Veil who helped legalize abortion in France.
At the Italian Upper East Side restaurant, ORLAN and I share a pasta, a fish stew, and spinach—she does not like the red wine, so she orders a Sonoma Chardonnay, a Kistler, on her dime: “the best for the table.” We clink our glasses and say santé, cheers. One of the curators is working on a project about nature and healing—ORLAN proclaims: “WHO CAN TRANSLATE?” and tells her about her newest series of superimposed techno-animal photographs. The other curator knew of the plastic surgeon who worked with ORLAN in New York; she is an art collector, and they decide to find her. “When were you in Los Angeles?” I ask. ORLAN spent three years in LA as a researcher upon invitation from the Getty Institute. “I can’t remember. Ask my avatar,” she responds nonchalantly. At the Gwangju Biennial in ORLAN Hybrid: A.rtistic I.ntelligence, an ORLAN avatar on view can access all her interviews and biographical data—“She is more accurate on dates than I am,” ORLAN says. We move from conversation to conversation. At one point, one curator whispers: “I don’t think she remembers. But I met ORLAN some twenty years ago in New York, and she invited me to a BDSM club.” Taking a cue from ORLAN, who is opposed to women feeling the need to be quiet, I say: “Wonderful. There is no need to whisper.”
ORLAN. Striptease. Published by The Everyday Press aka Bunker Basement. Courtesy of the artist.
On the subway, Grokhovsky and I debrief—we are both in awe of ORLAN. Grokhovsky adds: “Carolee Schneemanm, Barbara Hammer, and Martha Wilson have the same unrelenting energy.” Grokhovsky holds similar traits, always advocating, lobbying for, and doing more for herself and others. When she was applying for her green card, she founded The Immigrant Artist Biennial, whose first edition featured more than 60 artists standing up for other immigrant artists. In her artistic practice, she creates large-scale installations, operas, performances, paintings, and drawings that take up emotional and physical space. Like ORLAN, she cannot be confined. On Friday, ORLAN will attend the opening of the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum to celebrate the inclusion of Grokhovsky’s work.
Before ORLAN leaves New York, she sends me a message: “Merci d’être toi, je t’autorise á être moi”—Thank you for being you; I authorize you to be me—and I am moved to be part of her sisterhood of icons.
Clairvoyant is open through October 19 at Ceysson & Bénétière. ORLAN: Je t'autorise à être moi, je m'autorise à être toi is open through October 18 at Maison Française of NYU. ORLAN: A Retrospective is open through October 30 at The Opening Gallery.
