Saint Orlan faces reincarnation - artist's video-recording series of surgical procedures entitled 'Reincarnation of Saint Orlan'

A woman lies down on an operating table [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].

Having carefully placed five small, blue, elongated cups, face down, on the cheeks, temples, and chin of the human skull perched at the foot of her bed, she makes herself prone [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED].

Close-up:

The woman's face is marked.

A thick red line outlines each cheek bone. Two broken red lines reach from the coroner of her mouth to her ears. Her chin and temples are circled [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED].

Close-up:

A needle is inserted into a vein on the top of her left hand.

Blood runs over her hand and over some fantastic jewelry that adorns the same hand.

The woman smiles . . . on the operating table.

Extreme close-up:

Her head turned to the right, a long flexible injection needle punctures the skin of her left temple.

The skin's shape conforms to the needle's frantic probing actions underneath.

A scalpel slices along a marked line that traces her hairline, traverses the folds of the front of her ear, then continues behind the ear.

A pronged instrument penetrates the incision.

The instrument, when flexed, pries the skin away from the muscle.

As the surgeon lifts the skin we are able to see into the inner layers of the woman's head.

The woman is being flayed.

Her body rebels.

Her face begins to swell almost instantly.

A female voice asks - "Are you in pain?"

The surgeon, also a woman, wears a green surgical gown.

Two women, one in a green turban, the other in a black hat, both in black gowns, stand.

The standing women repeat the question - "Are you in pain?" One asks in English; the other, in sign language.

The operating room, painted bright green, contains an unconventional technology nook that has been built into its corner, housing phones, fax machines, video cameras, and broadcasting equipment. Other unorthodox props adorning the room include clocks labeled TOKYO, TORONTO, PARIS, NEW YORK.

The woman on the operating table is small and attractive. She wears bright red lipstick, eye makeup, has chin-length hair parted in the middle, one side dyed white, the other side dyed blue,(1) and wears a black pleated Issey Miyake dress and plastic corset over her dress.

These words describe Omnipresence, one in a series of videotaped surgical performances entitled The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan.(2) The artist is Orlan. Her response to the question about pain - "The initial injection hurts. After that the painful part is lying on an operating table for 6 hours" - is one of many she will give to phoned and faxed inquiries during the course of this performed surgery.

The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan began when she created a composite image, via morphing computer software, of her own face, combined with that of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, an anonymous School of Fontainebleau sculpture of Diana, Gustave Moreau's Europa, Botticelli's Venus, and Francois Pascal Simon Gerard's Psyche. The Mona Lisa was chosen "because she is not beautiful according to present standards of beauty, but because there is some 'man' under this woman. We now know it to be the self-portrait of Leonardo hiding under that of La Gioconda (which brings us back to an identity problem)."(3) Orlan incorporated the forehead and temples of Mona Lisa into the composite image. Diana, the goddess of the hunt, was added because she was aggressive and did not submit to men. Orlan used Diana's nose. Europa looked to another continent, permitting herself to be carried away into an unknown future. From her image, Orlan appropriated the mouth. From the image of Venus, goddess of love, fertility, and creativity, Orlan took the chin, and because of Psyche's need for love and spiritual beauty, Orlan appropriated the eyes.(4) Orlan explains:

I constructed my self-portrait by mixing representations of goddesses from Greek mythology: chosen not for the canons of beauty they are supposed to represent, but for their histories. . . . These representations of feminine personages have served as an inspiration to me and are there deep beneath my work in a symbolic manner. In this way, their images can resurface in works that I produce, with regard to their histories."(5)

She then integrated the composite into her own physiognomy through ten cosmetic surgeries. The eleventh will be performed within the next couple of years and will reconstruct her nose.

The seventh and most widely broadcast surgical performance, the previously described Omnipresence, took place on November 21, 1993, in New York and was performed by Dr. Marjorie Cramer. Regarding this surgery, Sarah Wilson imparts that "The Omnipresence was not that of the world, questioning, interactive at the site of incision, but a statement, of course, of Orlan's quasi-divine ubiquity."(6) Cheekbone and chin implants were inset into Orlan's head. Forehead implants were positioned as well, to mimic Mona Lisa's brow, which has distinct protruding temples. Orlan's temples resulted "in symmetrical horns - a brave new brow of Mosaic gravitas."(7)

Orlan's installation at the Sandra Gering Gallery, in New York, coincided with Omnipresence and included a diptych portraying forty-one photographs taken daily to document Orlan's face recovering from surgery [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED], juxtaposed with forty-one computer composites of the desired result; reliquaries which held containers of her blood and body fat; and Dr. Cramer's surgical gown (shroud). In the beginning of all of her performance-operations Orlan reads: