Surgery as Art – ORLAN
- Loredana Denicola
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Today I want to talk about an artist I discovered just a few days ago who immediately fascinated me, because she does things that are truly out of the ordinary…
I’m talking about ORLAN, a French artist who uses her own body as a genuine means of expression.
ORLAN is famous for her surgical performances, during which she alters her face through cosmetic procedures under local anesthesia. But her work is not about pain or physical suffering: it is what she calls Carnal Art, an art that works with the flesh to explore identity, beauty, and the relationship between technology and the body.
Beyond surgery, ORLAN has experimented with photography, video, performance, and new digital technologies, turning her body into a creative laboratory and bringing art into truly unusual territories. Through her work, she invites reflection on how medical technology and art can collaborate to construct new identities and redefine the concept of self.
From the 1970s to the present, she has explored different languages and technologies, experimenting with her own body and turning it into a true creative battlefield. Her practice does not belong to Body Art, which often exposes the body to pain and suffering, but to what she herself defines as Carnal Art: an art that works on the flesh, with the flesh, but without glorifying physical suffering.
Unlike Marina Abramović or other artists associated with Body Art, ORLAN does not seek the limits of endurance. Her surgical performances - real staged events mediated by technology - are performed under local anesthesia. There is no indulgence in pain; rather, there is a desire to assert that medical technology can transform the experience of the body and that art can appropriate it to construct new identities.
The Body as a territory of Freedom
At the heart of ORLAN’s artistic research lies a radical assertion of freedom: the body is not destiny, not a prison, not an untouchable “nature.” It is living matter to be shaped, recreated, and rewritten.
Between 1990 and 1993, in the cycle The Reincarnation of Saint ORLAN, she carried out nine surgical performances, transforming the operating room into a theatrical stage. These interventions were not about pursuing traditional ideals of beauty - like Venus, Psyche, or the Mona Lisa - but about deconstructing and questioning the cultural and historical myths behind them.
Each procedure was meticulously planned to challenge the viewer’s perception of aesthetics and identity. The prosthetics implanted in her temples, for example, serve as a bold statement: they are not intended to conform to prevailing standards of beauty, but to subvert them. Initially perceived as grotesque or unsettling, these modifications gradually became symbols of empowerment, transforming into “organs of seduction” that redefine what it means to inhabit one’s body.
Through her work, ORLAN highlights that the body is not a fixed object but a canvas for exploration and reinvention. Her performances provoke reflection on the intersections of art, medicine, and society, questioning who gets to define beauty and why.
By turning her own body into a site of experimentation, she invites viewers to reconsider their assumptions about identity, self-expression, and the possibilities of human transformation.
Art, Therapy, Transformation
While Body Art often focuses on wounds and trauma, ORLAN’s Carnal Art works instead on the possibility of transformation. This is where her work also takes on a therapeutic dimension. Her performances do not “heal” in a clinical sense, but they open a liberating perspective: they teach us that we can look at our bodies - with their vulnerabilities, pains, and inevitable changes - not as limits, but as creative possibilities.
Healing, in this context, is not the elimination of pain or injury, but the ability to rewrite their meaning. ORLAN takes elements that society considers flaws, taboos, or signs of weakness - wrinkles, growing breasts, menstrual blood, aging bodies - and transforms them into material for art. In doing so, she frees the body from shame and control, returning it to a space of personal power and freedom.
The therapeutic process lies precisely in this act of reclaiming: ORLAN stages her body as an open, visible, imperfect field, inviting viewers to confront their own flesh without fear. Experiencing her work can be unsettling, but it is a fertile discomfort that forces us to reconsider what we think about ourselves and others.
In this way, her art becomes a transformative mirror: it does not heal like medicine, but it opens the possibility of healing from oppressive narratives - those that demand we be beautiful, young, silent, and conformist.
The transformation is therefore twofold: ORLAN transforms her own body through technology and surgery, and simultaneously transforms the gaze of the viewer.
The therapeutic effect is not limited to those who directly experience the performance; it extends to anyone who encounters her images and works. It is a symbolic healing, concerning the relationship with the body and with identity.
In this sense, Carnal Art is therapeutic because it allows us to imagine bodies freed from societal constraints, easing the inner wounds produced by stereotypes, taboos, and discrimination.
During the pandemic, for example, ORLAN transformed masks into artworks, decorating them with images of cells, viruses, and words related to biology. She even used a black-and-white photograph of her vulva. In a moment of fear and isolation, she demonstrated how art can help confront collective anxiety, process pain, and turn it into awareness.
ORLAN does not choose middle paths: her voice is raw, direct, and targets the wounds many prefer not to see. In her writings and interventions, one senses the frustration of living femininity not as a personal achievement but as an imposed condition, full of knots - biological, social, and cultural.
Ignored, Invisible Women
One recurring theme that emerges in ORLAN’s work is that of “unseen” women - those who do not fit the ideal image constructed by society. Women who age, women with perceived flaws, women outside the dominant aesthetic standards, women whose stories do not “sell” well in the media - or worse, whose stories are unsettling.
These women face a double silence: not only are their issues - ranging from menopause to stigma, from “invisible” illnesses to social and economic struggles - under-discussed, but often they are simply not listened to. The voices of younger women - the ones considered desirable, available, and socially “useful” in youth - dominate, while the voices of mature women are marginalised, dismissed, or diminished.
Another recurring observation concerns the way some men appear to seek youth as a standard, a measure of their masculinity and social position.
This desire is far from harmless: it creates burdensome expectations for girls, turning them into objects of the gaze and use - youthful, desirable, fresh - while implying that female sexuality has a “physical expiration date.” There is an implicit narrative suggesting that women, after a certain age or experience, have less value, less power in desire, and a diminished voice.
ORLAN critiques this dynamic as well: the notion that femininity is a gift to display, a social prize to earn through beauty, eternal youth, and conformity to norms. This pressure is not limited to young women but resonates across all ages, forcing those who simply wish to exist, speak, make mistakes, or transform themselves into a constrained space.
Bodily contradictions: from breasts to menstruation
The female body is the primary site of contradiction - the origin of many societal pressures. ORLAN describes the anxiety when breasts begin to grow without consent: it is not merely a physical or adolescent worry, but a sign that the female body is immediately scrutinised and treated as an object. Breasts are not just a part of the body; they are objects of desire, judgment, and expectation.
Menstruation remains a powerful taboo in many cultures. Even today, people fear speaking about it, education often emphasises concealment over knowledge, and menstruation is stigmatised as something “dirty,” to hide or be ashamed of. This produces lasting discomfort, both physically and mentally, teaching that certain aspects of the female body must be silenced and suppressed.
Institutional and social violence: infibulation, femicide, discrimination
ORLAN does not limit herself to individual experiences; her critique extends to dramatic practices that represent the extreme of inequality and violence.
Infibulation and Female Genital Mutilation: These practices not only cause physical harm but carry the violence of silence, tradition, and the religious or cultural justifications often invoked in the name of female “virtue.” They bring the weight of taboo, suppress autonomous female sexuality, and mutilate not just the body but dignity itself.
Femicide: This is not mere news or sporadic tragedy, but a tragic expression of power relations. Every year, dozens or even hundreds of women are killed “because they are women,” often in contexts where domestic violence, stalking, or psychological abuse has already occurred long before the extreme act. ORLAN emphasises that these acts of violence are frequently “hidden” behind socially acceptable motives - jealousy, passion, or madness - which act as moral or media mitigators, weakening the perceived gravity of the crime.
Everyday Discrimination: Beyond rape or infibulation, women face workplace expectations, economic inequality, political marginalisation, and social exclusion. Judgments based on body, appearance, age, maternity (or lack thereof), and sexual choices weigh heavily and often limit opportunities.
The paradox of Freedom
ORLAN highlights that in many narratives, women are always caught between two opposing pressures:
Being flattered by male desire: “you must be attractive,” “you must be beautiful,” “you must be desired” - often leads to loss of autonomy and objectification.
Being judged if you do not meet traditional expectations - if you do not have children, exercise your sexual freedom, or fail to conform to ideals of womanhood, motherhood, or wifehood, you are criticised, stigmatised, or excluded.
This paradox makes the female condition extremely complex, as every choice carries contradictory expectations: you must comply, but not too much; appear desirable, but not “too free”; speak, but without offending; challenge taboos, but not provoke attack.
A body that speaks for All
In her reflections, ORLAN confronts the contradictions of being a woman without filters. She recounts the panic when her breasts began to grow without consent, denounces the enduring taboos around menstruation, and exposes the weight of societal expectations regarding maternity, sexuality, and aging. With the same intensity, she condemns practices such as infibulation, femicide, domestic violence, and the discrimination that still marks the lives of women worldwide.
Her discourse is never abstract: it starts from the body, her body, and becomes universal.
In this sense, Carnal Art is also a form of collective art-therapy: it offers a model for reclaiming the right to decide about one’s own body, rejecting stereotypes, and inventing new ways of existence.
Against the “Mask of the Innate”
One of ORLAN’s strongest concepts is the “mask of the innate”: what society tells us is natural and unchangeable. Skin color, biological sex, the very idea of beauty - everything is presented as destiny, when in fact it is the product of dominant ideologies and historical contexts.
ORLAN’s art works against these masks, opening spaces of possibility.
In her flayed self-portrait La Liberté en Encorchée, for example, she challenges racism itself: without skin, there is no color, and thus the categories that feed discrimination disappear. It is a manifesto work that combines aesthetic and political dimensions, turning vulnerability into critical strength.
Towards New Hybridisations
ORLAN’s journey continues to push boundaries. After exploring hybridisation with non-European cultures, she now focuses on robotics and biotechnology: sculptures made from her own cells, androids reproducing her appearance and voice, installations reflecting on endangered species’ survival. Always with the same conviction: art is never an end in itself, but a tool to interrogate society and imagine alternative futures.
ORLAN’s work is not mere provocation: it is both therapeutic and political.
It reminds us that the body is not a natural given, but a field of possibilities; that pain and transformation can be rewritten as acts of freedom; and that art can become a language capable of healing invisible, individual, and collective wounds.
In a world that tends to standardise and normalise, ORLAN invites us to experience the body as a space of resistance, creativity, and liberation.
Come cambierebbe il nostro rapporto con il corpo se lo vedessimo come uno spazio di libertà e creatività?
In che modo l’arte può diventare uno strumento di trasformazione e riflessione sulla femminilità?
Come possiamo dare voce alle donne invisibili e sfidare gli stereotipi che ancora pesano sulla società?
by Loredana
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