ABSTRACT
A multimedia artist since the 1960s, Orlan moved in 1980 to Ivry-sur-Seine in the Paris suburbs. In 1971 she named herself Saint Orlan, and in 1990 began the project The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, in which she transforms plastic surgery carried out on her face and body into performance art; her November 1993 operation, ‘Omnipresence’, was transmitted live to fourteen art galleries around the world. This ongoing project, which arguably styles feminist critique as art, constitutes a dramatic interrogation of the female human body, human identity and the increasing role of technology in the contemporary visual arts.
