ORLAN - Self-hybridization Beijing Opera

ORLAN is a French artist, born on May 30, 1947 in Saint-Etienne, who lives and works between Paris, New York and Los Angeles. The artist chose to write her pseudonym in capital letters: "ORLAN" . She expresses herself through different media: painting, sculpture, installations, performance, photography, digital images, biotechnologies. She is one of the French body art artists best known to the general public in France and abroad. Her work is situated in various provocative contexts, legitimized by her personal commitment.

The mask is also recurrent in ORLAN's work. An element par excellence of hybridization, metamorphosis, change of identity, the first "trick" of theater, it allows one to "gain distance from oneself." Here, this work summons both the Peking Opera and the artist's avatar, thanks to the most modern technological means, by scanning the scarf flat like a flashcode, with the easily downloadable AUGMENT application. ORLAN plays with the strict codes of the Peking Opera (women's roles are necessarily played by men), and with the visitor by doing the acrobat under their nose, by putting on makeup, in multiple and changing identities... The artist, once again, "steps out of the frame" and joins the visitor virtually in the exhibition space. It is possible to put yourself on stage with her and also thanks to the application to take a picture of yourself next to her...

© ORLAN