Half-white, half-black hair pulled up high, as if gravity had reversed, and protruding spangled implants on the temples, ORLAN claims to have been "born" in 1964.

"It was the moment when I began to become aware of my body and of myself", specifies to AFP the artist who created that year the photographic work "ORLAN gives birth to herself. 'likes', to be discovered at the Abattoirs museum in Toulouse, until August 28.

The exhibition also presents sculptures, videos or paintings by the artist.

She refuses to reveal her biological age.

"In everyday life, there is an injunction to stay young, especially for women. And from a certain age, you become invisible, you disappear," she argues.

A work by ORLAN, a French artist exhibited at the Abattoirs museum in Toulouse in the south of France on April 14, 2022 Lionel BONAVENTURE AFP

Invisible are also these nuns, returned "by force" to order in the course of history, which the visitor discovers with a tribute series of four sculptures of bodiless dresses, the folds of which reveal vulvas.

Body status

"The backbone of my work consists in questioning the status of the body in society through all the cultural, social, political or religious pressures that are expressed in the flesh, particularly those of women", says ORLAN.

And it is in the first place, around his own body, that the artist builds his work, as in Le Baiser de l'Artiste that we find in the exhibition.

This performance, produced in 1977, earned him an outburst of hatred, but also recognition in the art world, beyond the French borders.

That year, on the occasion of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) in Paris, ORLAN sat down behind a life-size photograph of his own naked body and offered passers-by "French kisses" for the price of five. frank.

Next to it, another representation of ORLAN, draped as Saint Thérèse.

A way for her to point out the "binary dimension of the roles assigned to women, who, in the eyes of patriarchal society, are either saints or whores".

The man, him, is at the “origin of the war”.

"Not all of course!", makes a point of specifying ORLAN, who likes to divert masterpieces, to underline the "absurdities" of society.

Thus the visitor discovers in a frame identical to the painting "The Origin of the World" by Gustave Courbet, a man of whom we see only the belly, the upper thighs and the erect penis.

"Dirty times"

"We're in a bad time": "I find that things are closing in. There have been developments, and #Meetoo has made people aware that many women were silent and suffered absolutely abominable things. But there are still a lot, a lot of work to do", judge ORLAN.

Constantly shaking up the "diktats" of sexism and the "normalization" of beauty, she uses cosmetic surgery on her own body to make it "a place of public debate".

"What is beauty? What is a monstrous body? I have constantly tried to re-figure, to disfigure the body", says ORLAN.

In 1993, during a performance filmed and broadcast live at the Sandra Gering gallery in New York or the Center Pompidou in Paris, she had implants placed in her cheeks and temples, a way for her to build herself in reverse of the conformism and the "mask of the innate".

Opposing natural determinisms to the end, not without a touch of humor at times, ORLAN integrates death into his artistic reflection.

"I made a petition against death, I think it's unbearable, that we should all revolt," she said.

"Some species of whales can live 300 years, while we humans have drawn the short straw, she regrets. But with the advancement of genetics (...) I think that at some point it there will be the death of death, or in any case, a much greater longevity".

And to clarify: "I love life, I will know what to do, I will not be bored!"

© 2022 AFP