ORLAN

Born in Saint-Étienne shortly after the end of World War II, one might consider that the artistic practice of Mireille Porte, who became ORLAN in 1964, is based on the succession and evolution of her own transformations into works of art. Unhesitating to break the rules of modesty, decency, or Christian morality, she imbues the entire female body with an air of scandal, highlighting the conflicts in which it can serve as both a battleground and a weapon. By employing a literalism that is at times shocking, subjecting her own body (particularly her face) to surgical alterations erased by subsequent ones, ORLAN has initiated a sometimes heated dialogue between the personal specificities of the female body and the norms shaped by the history of its representation.