ORLAN: Carnal Art

I was at my local magazine store the other day and found this Magazine called Carousel which focuses on poetry, fiction, comics and contemporary art.
As I flipped through I found this female contemporary artists ORLAN, who uses her body as a canvass to reveal the very man made constructions of beauty. This is the kind of work that gives you that half nauseous half beautiful feeling. ( To quote Miranda July )

But Im really conflicted...

One thing I want to question is how far is too far? For instance, as you can see her more recent work renders her continuing investigation of transfiguration through photographic self-portraits, Self-Hybridizations, inspired by pre-Columbian, African and Native American cultures. This is quite problematic. How can a white Parisian Performance artist get away with this? would you consider this racist...inhabiting/transforming ones body into African and Native American 'hybrids' through the guise of art?
where do we draw the line between art and cultural appropriation?

Many feminists have called Orlan an anti-feminist due to her goals and the means of reaching them. Instead of banishing cosmetic surgery, she embraces it; instead of rejecting the masculine, she incorporates it; instead of define her identity, she wishes for it to be “nomadic, mutant, shifting, differing.” She negates both patriarchal culture and the feminist ideal by creating her own identity for the future. As Orlan states, “my work is a struggle against the innate, the inexorable, the programmed, Nature, DNA (which is our direct rival as far as artists of representation are concerned), and God!”

"I can observe my own body cut open, without suffering!... I see myself all the way down to my entrails; a new mirror stage. "I can see to the heart of my lover; his splendid design has nothing to do with sickly sentimentalities"- Darling, I love your spleen; I love your liver; I adore your pancreas, and the line of your femur excites me." (Orlan from Carnal Art Manifesto)

Here's a fabulous blurb I found from UC Santa Babara English course Website
"Orlan is a performance artist who uses her own body and the procedures of plastic surgery to make "carnal art". She is transforming her face, but her aim is not to attain a commonly held standard of beauty. Orlan is the only artist working so radically with her own body, asking questions about the status of the body in society."

Drawing attention to the man-made (or "ready-made) construct of beauty. After her third surgery in 1990, she donned this Bride of Frankensteing wig for a portrait. The image is intended to draw attention to the notion that female beauty is constructed by men for the pleasure of men.

What is "Carnal Art"?

Carnal Art is a self-portrait in the classical sense, yet realized through the technology of its time. Lying between disfiguration and figuration, it is an inscription in flesh, as our age now makes possible. No longer seen as the ideal it once represented, the body has become an 'modified ready-made'. Carnal Art loves the baroque and parody; the grotesque, and other such styles that have been left behind, because Carnal Art opposes the social pressures that are exerted upon both the human body and the corpus of art. Carnal Art is anti-formalist and anti-conformist." (UC Santa Babara )

Cindy Sherman - Untitled # 315

I went to the AGO on Wednesday for my semiotics class. We were supposed to be checking out the Beautiful Fictions exhibition on the 5th floor to examine identity, art etc. in photography.

What impressed me first was the focus on Identity seems to always come from those individuals who are marked, identity wise. Women, people of colour and queer identified people continue to examine identities in ways that unmarked individuals seem unable to grasp. I believe it’s called the “transparency phenomenon”. Those unmarked individuals are unable to grasp the magnitude of difference. I particularly enjoyed Yasumasa Morimura’s portrait of 9 faces, a recreation of Rembrandt with all parties bearing the face of Morimura. His juxtaposition of his racial difference within the context of canonical western art is a great play on the west’s domination of the arts.



Anyway, in this exhibit there was one particular photograph by Cindy Sherman that was fascinating. In our class discussion afterword it turned out to be a popular piece. Somehow, I managed to not see how it evoked the vagina and birth, at least my classmates were on the ball. It truly does, and I find the green, and the disembodied eye suggest a monstrosity, particularly the monstrous feminine. This is of course interesting in relation to the notion of birth, because it is woman’s ability to give birth that marks them as different and monstrous from men.
Visually, I find the cut directly under her chin particularly striking in contrast with her green body. I feel that the red and the blood evokes so much of what it means to be a woman. There is always blood for us, menstrual blood, blood from the hymen, and blood from birth. Blood marks our pain, and our obligations to men.

The eye on top seems to represent spirituality as it faces the heavens. Women are the bearers of tradition, culture and spirituality. It also evokes the seventh chakra, Sahasrara, absolute perception and full consciousness. It is the highest level of human awareness.
So, basically, Cindy Sherman is fucking awesome. She is more well known for her photos that appear to be movie stills as she plays with female stereotypes used by the movie industry. She knows that’s going on.