I’ve been fas­ci­nated with Orlan since I first dis­cov­ered her my fresh­man year of col­lege. At the time, she was pre­sented in my art his­tory class as an artist who com­pos­ited all these faces from famous works of art, and strived to trans­form her­self into a grotesque copy of this sim­u­lated face. When I think about it now, this notion/narrative seems sim­plis­tic and quaint. There is such a per­for­ma­tive aspect to her work that the above expla­na­tion is really the easy way out.

One of the most beau­ti­ful things about Orlan is that she makes appar­ent the fact that we are per­form­ing with our bod­ies each day. And while none of us are under­go­ing surgery with­out anes­thetic, per­haps we should wake our­selves up to the arti­fi­cial­ity of our day-to-day life and our movements.

I love it when artists make dec­la­ra­tions like, “pain is an anachro­nism.” On the sur­face they seem so self-indulgent–oh, Orlan!–but these state­ments are per­haps the only things chal­leng­ing us anymore.