During a brief meeting with Richard regarding my single project, he advised me to take a look at the self named French artist Orlan. Orlan uses her body as the canvas in which she sculpts and molds to an idealized notion of the perfect face. Her concepts are deep and multi-dimensional. She takes a look back into the past when sculptors would pick and choose the models individual body parts to create what they felt to be the perfect image. She looked at other artists as inspiration to create what is thought to be the perfect face, and built up a whole image from fragmented pieces. By the aid of a plastic surgeon she has set out to sculpt and mold her own face in this face of the ultimate image of perfection. The surgery by no means improves the look of the artist, but by trying to set out to achieve the unobtainable she hopes to raise awareness of the grotesque obsession and importance society has placed on womens appearance. Orlan is the ultimate feminist, considering the length she is prepared to suffer to get the feminist message across. At the same time she is mutilating herself in the process to achieve an ideology. This transgressive artist creates a performance art piece out of the operations she undergoes to create the desired face. While the operations are being carried out under local anesthetic, she documents the procedure and also employs other performance artist to accompany her throughout her metamorphosis. She brings up many issues by creating such elaborate art such as identity, public dissection, self mutilation.
There are similarities that I can draw upon my own work in comparison to that of Orlan. The issue of aging and identity can be compared. It is important to everyone to have their own identity and to feel that they are the only ones who may assume that identity, but as we age our physical identities are ever changing. Sometimes for the better, but inevitably for the worse. How can you feel constantly comfortable with in your own skin when your skin is always changing. With the framework of aging there is always and ideology when you are younger you want to be older and vice versa. You can even go as far to say that it is a type of natural body mutilation. To mutilate is to injure, disfigure, or make imperfect by removing or irreparably damaging parts. This happens against the persons wishes and can not be naturally reversed. The only way to reverse the effects of aging is to undergo further mutilation by having plastic surgery.
I want my installation to be a physical representation of a conversation of my own thoughts within the concept of aging. I will be invading peoples thought processes by engaging the audience on a personal level, they will participate in their own instant look into the future. The installation is not interactive in the sense that you are able to participate in the art but not directly affect it. I want this piece to bring aging to peoples attention and think about themselves, love ones and even deceased loved ones. decided early on that my art would not be interactive. I think as an artist I am generally against interactive art. An artist once said that, “as an artist job to have a go at the world and tell them off!” To some degree I believe this to be true, if you can provoke somebody into having a reaction and an opinion then you have succeeded.
