Type of Document	Thesis
Author	Tessin, Stephanie C
URN	etd-11022007-124522
Title	Visions Of Excess: Orlan's Operational Theater
Degree	Master of Arts
Department	Art History, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Adam Jolles Committee Chair Roald Nasgaard Committee Member Tatiana Flores Committee Member
Keywords	Performance Art Transgression Taboo Georges Bataille Orlan Contemporary Art
Date of Defense	2007-10-22
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract When French avant-garde artist Orlan elected to surgically alter her face during a series of performances in the 1990s, she provoked extreme reactions both within art criticism and the popular press. Rather than focus on the artist’s mental health or intentions, I hope to connect her corpus of performances since the 1960s to taboos imposed upon the body. By blurring the boundaries between sexualized and sacred bodies and evoking the horror of death through self-mutilation, Orlan defiantly breaks these taboos. My thesis relates Orlan’s deconstruction of religious, art-historical, and social constructs to Georges Bataille’s writings on taboo and transgression. My connection between his vast body of literature and Orlan’s performances centers on his formulations of eroticism and sacrifice, and his description of transgression as the blurring of binary forces. I argue that Bataille’s writings that describe transgression as a gateway to inner experience resonate with Orlan’s outrageous performances.
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