Orlan Quotes & Sayings

Beauty is the product of the dominant ideology. (Thus when ideology changes, the ideal body follows.) We can see that in the history of art. — Orlan

I have always questioned the status of the body in our society. I have always been working on social, political, cultural and religious pressures, which prints them in the flesh and in particular in women's flesh. — Orlan

I don't know who are the men and who are the women. In French I used to say "je suis un femme et une homme." That is to say a feminine male and a masculine female. A she man and a he woman. What I am interested in is developing a singularity, which would be my own. — Orlan

Only a few kinds of images force you to shut your eyes: death, suffering, the opening of the body, some aspects of pornography for some people, and for others, giving birth. In this case, the eyes become black holes in which the image is absorbed willingly or unwillingly, these images are swallowed up and hit just where it hurts, without passing though the usual filters. — Orlan

Surgery is not my job. I have been the first artist to use aesthetic surgery in another context - not to appear younger or better according to the designated pattern. I wanted to disrupt the standarts of beauty. — Orlan

Being a narcissist isn't easy when the question is not of loving your own image, but of recreating the self through deliberate acts of alienation. — Orlan

My job is to be an artist and thus I use different media to deal with the status of the body in our society. — Orlan

I wanted to jeopardize my own image. With my image I had already produced art pieces such as videos of photographs. — Orlan

If one leaves home one might get a flower pot on his head and die. — Orlan

There are a lot of people who do crazy things without necessarily being crazy, for example crossing the Atlantic solo. Some crazy things which requires you not to be crazy to achieve them. — Orlan

A majority of the successful women on the pop scene conform to what a woman is supposed to be. Some have tried to get things moving. They have tried to modify the image. But sometimes the image has a hard time changing the eye - to change the relationship between the image and the eye takes longer. — Orlan

Some men develop their own singularity. Football makes men conform to stereotypes: the warrior or the hunter. Football produces a certain kind of masculinity - the drunk kind, the king who will yell the worst nationalist's ideas. In front of those, it is very difficult to be a dignified woman. — Orlan

I make myself into a new image in order to produce new images. — Orlan