3/1 Orlan

http://www.orlan.net/

http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ecook/courses/eng114em/surgeries.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/01/orlan-performance-artist-carnal-art

For me, Orlan represents the extreme. There is the obvious with the reconstruction of herself through plastic surgery in the 1990's, but its what she did with the surgeries that strikes me the most interesting. Orlan taped and broadcast her surgeries live to institutions throughout the world. She used the surgeries to sculpt her image into classical ideals of women according to the canon of art history. Orlan picked these women not because of their beauty but for the stories.. the anti-beauty- Diana because she is inferior to the gods and men but is leader of the goddesses and women; Mona Lisa because of the standard of beauty, or anti-beauty, she represents; Psyche because of her fragility and vulnerability within the soul; Venus for carnal beauty; Europa for her adventurous outlook to the horizon, the future.
These images of what it takes to be beautiful, or the idea or ideal beauty are gory and "carnal". Orlan uses this, she sees the whole process as a performance, or as a stage. She uses elaborate costumes to present a scene. Although this work was done in the 1990's, it for me represents the extreme of what can be and is transmitted on the Television.