Monday, April 26, 2010

The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan














"Clearly Carnal Art does not inherit anything from the Christian tradition, against which it fights! Carnal Art points to religion's denial of the 'pleasures of the body', and puts the naked body in the spaces opened up through scientific discovery. Carnal Art does not inherit anything from hagiography through decapitations and other martyrs, it adds more than it takes away. Augmenting their powers instead of reducing them, Carnal Art is not self-mutilation.

Carnal Art transforms the body into language, reversing the Christian principle of 'the word made flesh', the flesh is made word. Only the voice of Orlan remains unchanged."

(Carnal Art Manifesto)

What are the religious implication of Carnal Art?
Why are Orlan's surgeries so difficult to watch?
Are her artistic and political goals furthered by her nine surgeries?

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Orlan



S'habiller sur sa propre nudite, 1974


mesuRAGE de Paris, Centre Pompidou, 1977
----------------------------------

Self-Hybridization series: Precolumbian, 1998

Self-Hybridization series: African, 2000-2003

Self-Hybridization series: American Indian, 2005-2008


Carnal Art vs Body Art

Carnal Art is not against cosmetic surgery but, rather against the conventions carried by it and their subsequent inscription, within female flesh in particular, but also male. Carnal Art is feminist, that is necessary. It is interested not only in cosmetic surgery, but also advanced techniques in medicine and biology that question the status of the body and the ethical questions posed by them. She calls it Carnal Art. Unlike 'Body Art', Carnal Art does not desire pain as a means of redemption, or to attain purification. Carnal Art does not wish to acheive a final 'plastic' result, but rather seeks to modify the body, and engage in public debate. Says Orlan: "'My work is not a stand against cosmetic surgery, but against the standards of beauty, against the dictates of a dominant ideology that impresses itself more and more on feminine . . . flesh'". It's also a stand against nature. Through her art, Orlan seeks to link the interior self with the exterior self. She takes physiognomy to its extreme.
-O'Bryan



Video on Orlan and Carnal Art

Body Alteration / Body Modification


Waafa Bilal
...and Counting
2010

"
…and Counting addresses this double standard as Bilal turns his own body – in a 24-hour live performance -- into a canvas, his back tattooed with a borderless map of Iraq covered with one dot for each Iraqi and American casualty near the cities where they fell. The 5,000 dead American soldiers are represented by red dots (permanent visible ink), and the 100,000 Iraqi casualties are represented by dots of green UV ink, seemingly invisible unless under black light. During the performance people from all walks of life read off the names of the dead. "

"The Body is Obsolete"
-Stelarc


Stelarc
Ear on Arm
2003-2006


Stelarc
Exoskeleton
1998

Body Extension



Oskar Schlemmer, Spiral Costume





Rebecca Horn, Finger Gloves


Janine Antoni, Umbilical



April Wood, Feeding the Hunger #4




April Wood, Feeding the Hunger #4

Yevgenyia Kagonovich, Double Balloon Mouthpiece



Tiffany Parbs, Blister Ring



Gijs Baker, Profile Ornament



Jennifer Crupi, Posture Gauge-Chin



Jennifer Crupi, Guarded Gestures

Body as symbol of mortality



Lauren Kalman, Cystic Acne



Hannah Wilke
Starification Object Series, 1974


Hannah Wilke
Intra-Venus Series #4
1988-93




Lucian Freud, Naked Portrait with Reflection


John Coplans, Self Portrait Upside Down


Jenny Saville
Plan
1993

Difference and Race, Difference and Culture



Renee Cox, HOTT-EN-TOT



Ellen Gallagher, Oh! Susanna.




Berni Seale, Girl, from Colour Me series



Berni Searle, installation from Colour Me



Glenn Ligon, Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Black Features/Self-Portrait exaggerating My White Features

Displacement



Tania Bruguera, The Weight of Guilt (Untitled #2)

"My work is ephemeral not only because of the use of live actions or fragile materials but because of the ephemeral condition of any political 'truth'"

- Tania Bruguera, exerpt from Artist Statement



Zhang Huan
My America (Hard to Acclimatize)
1999

Zhang Huan, Family Tree, 2000
Using the body as a canvas

Difference and Sexuality


Catherine Opie
Self Portrait / Pervert
1994


Catherine Opie
Being and Having: Self Portrait
1991- ongoing



Ma Liuming Fish Child


Ma Liuming
Fen-Ma Liuming Self Portrait 5


Ma Liuming
Fen-Ma Liuming's Lunch 1


Ma Liuming
Fen-Ma Liuming Walks the Great Wall
1998



Robert Mapplethorpe
Self Portrait
1980


Robert Mapplethorpe
Self Portrait



Robert Mapplethorpe
Lou, NYC X
1978


Robert Mapplethorpe
Derrick Cross
1985


Robert Mapplethorpe
Thomas
1987


Glenn Ligon
Notes on the Margin of the Black Book
1991-93