Fashioning Identity: ORLAN and the Harlequin Coat

SMU Department of English, Department of Art History, and WGS present a Gilbert Lecture Series talk: "Fashioning Identity: ORLAN and the Harlequin Coat" given by Rhonda Garelick. This free talk is on Wednesday, April 27, 2011. The reception will be at 6:00 pm, Texana Room, DeGolyer Library and the lecture will be at 6:30 pm, Stanley Marcus Reading Room, DeGolyer Library.

About the speaker: Rhonda Garelick is a Professor of English and Performing Arts of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her books include Rising Star; Electric Salome: Loie Fuller's Performance of Modernism; Fabulous Harlequin: ORLAN and the Patchwok Self; and the forthcoming Antigone in Vogue: Coco Chanel and the Myths of Fashion (Random House). Garelick has won many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

About the talk: For decades, French artist ORLAN has interrogated all aspects of human identity through an endlessly mutating oeuvre that defies categorization. She is most famous for her 1990s series of plastic-surgery performances. Recently, ORLAN has launched a new series based on the commedia dell'arte's Harlequin figure, using his patchwork coat as a metaphor for multicultural identity. The Harlequin Coat project combines fashion, furniture design, and biogenetics (making use of animal and human cells woven inot a "cloth"), and marks the first time that ORLAN has suppressed her own image entirely.

For more information, see the Gilbert Series page.