"Carte Blanche" to ORLAN

For this edition of Modem Women's Collections, which is dedicated to the Spring/Summer 2016 season, we gave "carte blanche" to ORLAN, one of today’s most important living French artists.

ORLAN uses sculpture, photography, performance, video, 3D, video games, and augmented reality throughout her body of work, as well as scientific techniques, such as surgery and bio-technology. In fact, these are just merely artistic tools for the artist — the idea is always at the core of her work, the medium comes after.

ORLAN also uses her body as a canvas, a primary material, a visual tool for her work. She quickly became "a place for public debate" and is a major figure of the body art movement, or more specifically of ‘Carnal Art’, which she defined in her 1989 manifesto.

In 1964, she initiated her own re-invention process, and therefore changed her name to ORLAN, written in capital letters, and created "ORLAN accouche d'elle m’aime" ("ORLAN gives birth to her loved self"), with the aim to abolish her biographical and physical existence for the sake of her work.

A pioneer in the history of performance art, she achieved great success with "The Artist’s Kiss" at the 1977 edition of FIAC in Paris, as this performance became subject of a scandal and shook up her career and her life. Outside the Grand Palais, a life-size photo of her torso was turned into a slot machine. After inserting a coin, one could see it descending to the groin, and then was awarded a kiss from the artist, who stood on a pedestal behind it. Her work, which is based on Baroque iconography, plays with the founding myths of Judeo-Christian art, while expressing a particular taste for secular perversion.

In 1978, she founded the International Symposium of Performance in Lyon and put an emphasis on a recurring performance project named "MesuRages", in which she would use her own body as a as a unit of measurement, called the "Orlan-body". In this context, she measured iconic places, such as the Centre Pompido in Paris, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh (US), and also the M HKA in Antwerp, Belgium, among others.

In 1990, when she decided to use cosmetic surgery as an artistic medium, the operating room became her workshop where she read texts of Michel Serres, Julia Kristeva or Antonin Artaud, and programmed satellite video broadcasts of her procedures of plastic surgery.

Since 1998, ORLAN uses morphing to merge her face with past facial representations from the New World, giving birth to a mutant beauty, located at the crossroads of Western culture to non-Western culture.

Today, ORLAN continues to be a pioneer artist by using new techniques and technologies. One of her latest series, "Masques de l'opéra de Pékin" ("Beijing Opera Masks") (2014), which is printed on the cover and dividers of this edition, uses augmented reality. In fact, ORLAN aims to go beyond Beijing’s opera rules that forbid women to interpret their own roles. This series has been exhibited by Galerie Michel Rein, which also represents the artist.

So ... Thanks to ORLAN, this edition of Modem is magical !

DOWNLOAD THE "AUGMENT" APP TO SCAN OUR COVER and DIVIDERS IMAGES (Modem Milano and Paris editions and Modemonline) and PLAY WITH VIRTUAL 3-D PERFORMANCES BY ARTIST ORLAN.

10 MASKS = 10 PERFORMANCES

DOWNLOAD here "AUGMENT" APP, but you can do it on the APPLE STORE.

DO IT !
... and ENJOY.

Ezio Barbaro & Modem thank their partners and wish everyone a great season.