Saint Orlan

Ritual As Violent Spectacle and

Cultural Criticism

Alyda Faber

Saint Orlan, as the French performance artist named herself in 1971, has created
a series of widely publicized surgical performances called The Reincarnation of
Saint Orlan. Her practice of self-directed violence creates a spectacle that violates
the viewer and establishes her body as “a site of public debate” (Orlan 1998:319).
By violence I mean acts that threaten the body as a sensorium of pain and injury,
both physical and psychic. My interpretion of Orlan’s project as violence does
not entail moralizing against violence, that is, considering violence within an
ethical framework of clear distinctions of good and evil. Orlan’s work challenges
such categorical distinctions. The artist’s use of cosmetic surgery as a medium
for artistic expression ampliŽ es the social pressures on women to conform to
narrowly deŽ ned patriarchal standards of beauty. In fact, her work exposes the
violence of these beauty standards insofar as her “reincarnation” project embodies
these practices to excess.
Since 1990, Orlan has had nine cosmetic surgeries; each has been videotaped
and directed as a performance (see Augsburg 1998; Davis 1997; Rose 1993). Each
surgery has a theme, which Orlan develops by reading from philosophical, literary,
or psychoanalytic texts as she is operated on, and all participants in the surgery-
performances are dressed in costumes created by famous fashion designers Paco
Rabamme, Franck Sorbier, Miyaké, and Lan Vu. Orlan often holds iconic props,
such as a devil’s pitchfork, and some surgeries are accompanied by dancers. Her
Ž rst four surgeries involved liposuction: reduction and reshaping of her ankles,
knees, hips, buttocks, waist, and neck. Orlan considers the seventh surgery, titled
Omniprésence (1993), the most signiŽ cant. This surgery was broadcast live to 15
art galleries in several different countries, and viewers could ask Orlan questions
during the operation. A postperformance gallery installation of Omniprésence fea-
tured 41 images contrasting a computer-generated image of Orlan (a composite
of selected features from classical paintings of Diana, Mona Lisa, Psyche, Venus,
and Europa) with daily photos of Orlan as she recovered from surgery, her face
bandaged, swollen, discolored, and scarred. Also in the aftermath of each per-
formance, Orlan makes relics of her body tissue, enclosing inside the reliquaries

The Drama Review 46, 1 (T173), Spring 2002. Copyright Ó 2002

New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

85
86 Alyda Faber

1. Orlan on the operating

table in Opération Opéra pieces of scalp with hair attached, clumps of fat, and bloody bits of gauze, which
(1991). (From ORLAN, she sells for as much as 10,000 francs (U.S.$1,400).
Carnal Art [2001]. Ste- Surgeries seven, eight, and nine mark a radicalization of Orlan’s surgical pro-
phan Oriach, director) jects: the formation of a “mutant body” (Orlan 1999). To this end, Orlan had an
implant inserted at each temple, creating two bumps on her head (Omniprésence,
1993), and the largest breast implants possible for her anatomy. Orlan anticipated
a tenth and Ž nal surgery to take place in Japan, to construct an immense nose
that would begin in the middle of her forehead, in the style of a pre-Columbian
Mayan mask. The Reincarnation project was intended to terminate with Orlan’s
request to an advertising agency to give her a new name, and her subsequent
application for a legal name change. In 1997 she revised her original plans for
concluding the project and began a collaborative work with Pierre Zovilé of
Montréal, entitled Self-Hybridations (see Ayers 1999; Zovilé 1998). Together they
create digital images that combine Orlan’s features with features that re ect
beauty standards from other cultures and eras, including skull deformations, scar-
iŽ cation, and squints. In an interview with Robert Ayers, in which she discusses
her Self-Hybridation project, Orlan says that she plans to augment her virtual
reconstruction work with two further surgeries: “one which is quite involved
and the other [which] is lighter, more poetic, but I’d like these to be the apo-
theosis of all my operations.” Orlan does not disclose the nature of the Ž rst surgery
except to say that it is an unprecedented procedure intended to intensify her
faculties. The second surgery will simply be “opening up and closing the body”
while Orlan observes with serenity and dispassion (Ayers 1999:182).
Orlan calls her work “blasphemous.” She deliberately creates and embodies
visual parodies of Christian martyrdom by assuming cruciform positions on the
operating table. These images reinforce Orlan’s excessive appropriation and em-
bodiment of the rituals of feminine beauty that pressure women to seek an un-
attainable physical perfection. Her intention is to expose the invisible practice of
cosmetic surgery, “desacralizing the surgical act and making a private act trans-
 Saint Orlan 87
parent, public” (Orlan 1998:322). It seems to me, however, that she also resa-
cralizes surgery by deepening the ritual aspects of cosmetic surgery, and by
creating visceral and grotesque images that evoke sensations of awe and horror
to elicit the sacred dimensions of the experience.
In this way, Orlan’s work resembles that of the French philosopher, Georges
Bataille (1897–1962). In his writings, Bataille documents his attempts to stay
inside the experience of violence through a sustained practice of internalized
sacriŽ ce. Following Christian hagiographies, yet creating his own heterodox mys-
ticism of violence in opposition to them, Bataille seeks a dissolution of self-
presence through practices of sexual orgies, drunkenness, and meditation upon
photographs of a contemporary torture victim. In these practices, he Ž nds himself
“undone like  owing sand,” pouring out his energies in a wanton expenditure
that deŽ es habitual human economies of measured exchanges. This temporary
dissolution of self into nature, existing “in the world like water in water” (Bataille
1989 [1973]:19) embodies a loss of subject-object distinctions sustained by cog-
nition. Bataille evokes a certain catastrophic grace inside human  esh: “Every-
thing broken, and a feeling of inexorability— which I love [...]. Unprotected,
consenting, ecstatic: as if blood poured from my eyes” (1988 [1961]:77). For Bataille,
the  esh in its aversive pain and its domestic abyss of possible death is a violating,
horrifying, joyous encounter with the sacred. In his writings, he creates himself
as a sacred Ž gure of this vivifying and terrifying proximity to death in life.
Through her cosmetic surgeries, Orlan embodies a similar risk-Ž lled venture that
threatens habitual human economies of bodily integrity, thus opening painful
sensations of the ungovernable  esh, of the “body-machine” (1998:322) for the
spectator. This is to say that the violent spectacle of her surgeries creates an
experience of the kind of vertiginous attraction-repulsion that Bataille calls a
sacred apotheosis of the wanton sordid  esh.
While Orlan seems more interested in the self’s negotiations with and disap-
pearance into technology— rather than into nature— like Bataille, Orlan enacts
the transformation of self into a sacred Ž gure and art. Her art dissolves distinctions
between subject and object, author and work, in and through her transformations
of her own body as a work of art, within the framework of a self-appointed
saintliness. Catherine Bell’s understanding of ritualization in Ritual Theory, Ritual
Practice (1992) and Edith Wyschogrod’s conception of a transgressive saintliness
in Saints and Postmodernism (1990) are particularly illuminating with respect to
this aspect of Orlan’s project. Both works suggest ways to interpret Orlan’s self-
designated saintliness through their attention to the creation of religious meanings
and the signiŽ cance of the body for religious ritual and imaginative acts.
For Bell, the body and its actions are the foundation of ritual practice: “It is
the unrecognized primacy of the body in a ritualized environment that distin-
guishes ritualization from other social strategies” (1992:180). The centrality of
the body to ritual means that “ritualization is a particularly ‘mute’ form of activity.
It is designed to do what it does without bringing what it is doing across the
threshold of discourse or systematic thinking” (93). Ritualization orders the am-
biguities and indeterminacies of experience into distinctions between good and
evil, light and dark, spirit and  esh, above and below, inside and outside. This
dualistic framework evokes what Bell calls a “redemptive hegemony,” an under-
standing of ultimate power and order in the world. The ritual agent learns this
redemptive order through embodied practices. For example, in a Catholic mass,
kneeling embodies submission to a power above oneself (rather than representing
submission). The ritual agent participates in this practice while interpreting its
symbolism. The framework for understanding the world created through ritu-
alization is then used by individuals to interpret experiences beyond the ritual
space.
The embodied, prediscursive aspects of ritualization described by Bell have
88 Alyda Faber

2. and 3. Orlan recovers

from the performance-
surgery Omniprésence
(1993), her face bandaged,
swollen, discolored, and
scarred. (From ORLAN,
Carnal Art [2001].
Stephan Oriach, director)

relevance to the postmodern saint as described by Edith Wyschogrod. Wyscho-

grod responds to the contemporary impasse of contested ethical theories by pro-
posing as an alternative the “ esh-and-blood” saint. Such a person responds to
the needs of the Other, attempting to alleviate the mental or physical suffering
of the needy without consideration of the pain it causes her or himself. Saintliness
evokes an imperative to imitate, through the saint’s embodiment of excessive love
and generosity toward the Other. This desire on the part of the saint incorporates
the “pain and wounding of desire, its restlessness, its instability and obsessiveness”
(Wyschogrod 1990:146). Wyschogrod argues that the saint’s communication of
love, generosity, and compassion “depends upon the human body as an unsur-
passable condition of meaning” (59), which is similar to Bell’s understanding of
how ritualization conveys ambiguous and indeterminate meaning. The meaning
the saint conveys must be interpreted as art, and is only truly perceived when an
imitator extends the saint’s movements into her own life. Yet postmodern saints,
in Wyschogrod’s view, may also embody the excesses of contemporary society
and its practices of unrestrained desire, which Wyschogrod refers to as “saints of
depravity.” I argue that Orlan invests her body with the kind of plastic signiŽ cance
that contemporary patriarchal capitalist societies encourage, a parodic saintliness
that reveals the debility and pain of such a body, and not a saintliness meant as a
model to imitate.
Orlan communicates her art using the medium of her body, and as both Bell
and Wyschogrod suggest, the primacy of the body as a means of communication
creates meaning that cannot be limited to or by propositional discourse. Orlan’s
art develops a transgressive form of prediscursive communication by creating a
spectacle of violence. As Kathy Davis notes, “While Orlan begins her perfor-
mances by apologizing to her audience for causing them pain, this is precisely
her intention” (1997:172). Orlan states that art is not meant to be decoration for
apartments: we have plants, aquariums, furniture, and curtains that serve this
purpose. Art must disturb both artist and viewer, forcing us to question its de-
viance and its social project (Orlan 1999). Her art is not in the least decorative.
Watching video or Ž lm footage of her surgical performances is an acutely painful
experience. At the Festival International du Film sur l’Art held in Montréal from
13 to 17 March 2001, I attended a premiere screening of Stephan Oriach’s doc-
umentary ORLAN, Carnal Art (2000) billed as “surgical performances for the
 Saint Orlan 89

not-so-queasy [pour estomacs solides].” Without the breaks provided by com-

mentary on her work by art critics, I was certain I could not have sustained the
intense pressure I felt in my gut as I looked at images of her surgery. People in
the audience around me were gasping, closing their eyes, recoiling at images of
her punctured and opened body: a surgeon inserts an epidural needle into her
spine, saws the skin on her leg following the lines he has drawn on her  esh,
empties the contents of a needle into her cheek, slices into her lips, probes a tube
into a  eshly hole under her chin, moves an oblong implement around under
her cheeks, cuts the skin around her ear and moves the skin around like a  ap.
Orlan refers to her art as a “parodic style, the grotesque, and the ironic”
(1998:321). In my view, Orlan uses a medium of violence against her own body
to create uncontestable images of the opened body that force the attention of the
spectators and to establish the authority of her own political protest. Following
both Bell’s and Wyschogrod’s arguments about ritual and saintly acts as radically
corporeal, Orlan’s impotence and her self-assertion during her surgeries embody
in an extreme way how cultural messages are imprinted on our  esh—with
possibly violent repercussions.
Cosmetic surgery is an ambiguous, ritualized violence that, in Orlan’s practice
of it, creates ritual that evokes horror, pain, chaos, and disorder in the spectator—
the counterpoint of the “redemptive hegemony” that Bell describes. Orlan’s
surgeries blend capitulation to social “advertising” of the female body with re-
sistance to those impositions. During her performance-surgeries, Orlan is both
active director and passive object under the surgeon’s knife. She recites from texts
as long as she is able, evoking an impression of “an autopsied corpse that continues
to speak, as if detached from its body” (Orlan 1998:321). Her reference to her
own perverse appearance as a life-like corpse is not gratuitous: for Orlan, art is a
matter of life and death, and she is conscious of the risks of disŽ gurement and
paralysis that she faces with each surgery.
Orlan’s performances challenge the patriarchal imperative to control the body,
since she consents to becoming the object of surgery even while remaining a
conscious participant or subject of the process. In this way, she exposes the un-
acknowledged suffering that comes with any attempt to achieve the images of
women as portrayed in advertising by fashion models. Orlan’s opened body ex-
poses her audience to the body’s passivity and receptivity to pain and wounding,
and also, in this case, its complicity in the wounding. As cultural critique, Orlan’s
90 Alyda Faber
performances expose the pain caused by heedless ca-
pitulation to the male desire for a sculpted body. As
Susan Bordo argues, this desire to reshape the body is
“an industry and an ideology fuelled by fantasies of re-
arranging, transforming, and correcting, an ideology of
limitless improvement and change, defying the histo-
ricity, the mortality, and indeed, the very materiality of
the body” (1993:245). Orlan’s performances command
attention because she puts her own body at risk in order
to create awareness of the extent to which we all dis-
cipline our own bodies, in more or less painful ways,
to conform to current social norms. In Wyschogrod’s
terms, Orlan’s saintly self-sacriŽ ce to the surgical prac-
tices used to reshape her plastic body paradoxically be-
comes her strongest form of communication.
Orlan is often asked about the pain she suffers, which
she explains away as peripheral to her project: “Carnal
Art does not desire pain, does not seek pain as a source
of puriŽ cation, and does not perceive pain as Re-
demption” (1998:319). She presents her body as a
monument to an excessive social desire for physical
transformation, to evoke pain in the spectator and to
force questions about the body in contemporary capi-
talist society. Grotesque images of her surgery-
performances are intended to reverberate through the
spectator’s body as something “burnt and bitten into
[...] consciousness” (Eliot 1968:571). Orlan seems to
want her spectators to come to an awareness of social
impressions upon the body in the same prediscursive
4. Orlan refers to her art as
way that culture forms our bodily habits and disciplines. Violence forces upon
“parodic style, the gro-
spectators a visceral understanding:
tesque, and ironic.” In
Opération Opéra (1991),
Few images force us to close our eyes: death, suffering, the opening of the
four gloved surgeons perform
body. [...] Here the eyes become black holes in which the image is ab-
cuts on Orlan’s nose (From
sorbed willingly or by force. There images plunge in and strike directly
ORLAN, Carnal Art
where it hurts without passing through the habitual Ž lters, as if the eyes
[2001]. Stephan Oriach, di-
no longer had any connection with the brain. (Orlan 1998:315)
rector)
The authority of her protest against the imposition of unattainable feminine
beauty standards depends upon reiterated images of violence to her own body as
it is probed, cut, suctioned, stuck, and sliced with surgical implements. As with
ritualization, the power of these images resides in their prediscursive reverbera-
tions in and through the body of the spectator. And, as Bell points out, the
ambiguity of such communication means that it is open to a wide range of in-
terpretation.
The ambiguity and indeterminacy of Orlan’s embodied communication means
that she can be interpreted as either rejecting or conforming to prevailing cultural
standards of feminine beauty. While she is clearly opposed to the commerciali-
zation of art and the commodiŽ cation of feminine beauty standards, she none-
theless sells reliquaries of her body tissues, in effect, selling her  esh. She acts as
a parodic exemplum of the pressures that women feel to conform to beauty
standards by working exclusively at the transformation of her body. The early
surgeries Ž t within the cosmetic intentions of this kind of surgery, and it is only
from the seventh surgery on that she begins to create a mutant body in parodic
 Saint Orlan 91

5. During her performance-

surgeries, Orlan is both ac-
tive director and passive
object under the surgeon’s
knife. In Opération
Opéra (1991), a syringe
enters Orlan’s face, which
has been marked to guide
the surgeon’s knife (From
ORLAN, Carnal Art
[2001]. Stephan Oriach,
director)

fulŽ llment of feminine beauty standards. She explains that the Ž rst surgeries were
performed by male surgeons who wanted to keep her “cute.” Orlan embodies
the fantasy of a self-orchestrated and limitless transformation of the body, yet she
contrasts  uid, computer generated images of herself with those images created
by her own “body-machine” (1998:322), which are entirely unpredictable and
uncontrollable. Orlan’s fantasies of self-transformation seem to dematerialize the
body, yet at the same time her patient documentation of her cosmetic surgeries
and the process of recovery from these operations expose “plastic surgery as a
lengthy, laborious, imprecise, and imperfect [material] process rather than a quick
and easy result” (Augsburg 1998:291), thereby recovering the  eshly weight of
the body.
Orlan chooses to be a parodic exemplar of an unrestrained desire to transform
the body. Because of her ambiguous embodied communication, she runs the risk
of reinstating the very ideologies she protests in her attempt to open—through
violent spectacle —public debate about power and disempowerment in and
through the feminine body. Orlan’s work also intimates an important possibility
within her performance of a saintliness of depravity. She creates a religious frame-
work, albeit blasphemous, that disrupts common patterns of religious meaning
limited to a redemptive order, and intimates a sacred meaning for embodied ex-
periences of negativity, disorder, pain, violence, and bodily disintegration.

References
Augsburg, Tanya
1998 “Orlan’s Performative Transformations of Subjectivity.” In The Ends of Perfor-
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Ayers, Robert
1999 “Serene and Happy and Distant: An Interview with Orlan.” Body in Society 5,
2:171–84.
Bataille, Georges
1988 [1961] Guilty. Translated by Bruce Boone. Venice, CA: Lapis Press.
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Bell, Catherine
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Alyda Faber is Assistant Professor of Theology at Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax,

Canada. She is currently working on a project entitled “Wounds: Theories of Violence in
Theological Discourse.”