Art and The Body

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
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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

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