ORLAN

The Latvian National Museum of Art in collaboration with the Publishers Neputns has released a richly illustrated catalogue in Latvian, French and English – ORLAN. It accompanies the exhibition "The Icon of French Contemporary Art – ORLAN. Le Plan du film and Other Scenarios". Both events are part of the programme "Riga – European Capital of Culture 2014".

The specific question of ORLAN’s work is that it does not relate to nonsense, an elegant and rational form of absurdity, but rather contains a plethora of meanings.

Catherine Grenier

Project manager and curator Inese Baranovska: "A section of society has developed a very linear conception about ORLAN's creative work, which is firstly associated with her scandalous plastic surgery operations in the early 1990s. Subjecting herself to plastic surgery operations and transforming them into exquisite theatrical productions could be considered as very extreme forms of art expression, a powerful reaction against society's standarts and dogmas - if you speak quietly, you may not be heard. But this is only one of ORLAN's infinitely many methods of art expression, the main mission of which is to free the person from their usual comfort zone, helping them to risk being different, to accept the different, namely, "Those who evolve will survive" - so wrote the great Latvian poetry, Rainis."

Text authors are: art historian, project manager and curator Inese Baranovska, the remarkable French art theorist and curator Catherine Grenier, film and art experts Dominique Païni and Jean-Pierre Rehm, the "Orbita" group (Latvia's Russian poets, photographers, musicians and multi-media artists association) and ORLAN.