Orlan is a French performance artist whose most recent work is herself: for The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, she has since May 1990 undergone a series of plastic surgical operations to transform herself into a new being, modelled on Venus, Diana, Europa, Psyche and Mona Lisa.
Mirror, mirror... two self-reflective sonnets
i.
Some squeezed their Titians into push-up bras;
I took a long hard butchers at Boucher�s Europa.
Thought why the fuck not? Ripped off her lips.
While others sat, let Rubens fill out their hips,
I chipped Diana �s nose from Fontainebleau
- a chisel�s tap, that slope of classic marble�s mine .
I stanley-knifed the Mona Lisa �s brow,
half-inched this chin from Botticelli�s Venus;
took G�r�me�s Psyche, gouged out these eyes.
I can�t be framed; I am a gallery of alibis.
I stole the spark, depedestalled each goddess�s beauty;
sat them on this bowl , in flesh that farts and shits.
WANTED: VENUS aka APHRODITE.
Beneath that Poster Girl that�s me - That�s my Identikit.
ii.
Take a peek into my Theatre of Operations.
Here my co-stars are handsome surgeons,
costumed by Issey Miyake, Paco Rabanne.
For finance I auction off bloodstained couture,
then fill my face with further skinfuls of future.
Behind this curtain is the Theatre of my Self.
See! here is tissue rearranged, opened flesh;
here collagen�s collaged, the carnal�s carnivalesqued.
My soul�s skin-deep: Repro as your desk�s
veneer. That laminate�s just photographed woodgrain;
I am flat-packed beauty. Only my voice remains.
It echoes in the temple. Who says the pantheon is dead?
You hear me, per sonare, speaking through a mask.
You see a missing goddess in / and / or a flesh retread.