With her surgical operations-cum-performances, Orlan makes the operating table her artist’s studio, where she produces work consisting of videos, drawings made with her own blood, reliquaries containing her flesh, shrouds, texts… By submitting her own body to aesthetic surgery, the French artist, born in 1947, denounces the social pressures exerted on the female body and with acute intelligence raises essential issues such as identity and genetic manipulation. Carnal art.