A heroic male and a beautiful woman. Teemu Mäki,Orlan and the ambivalence of the grotesque body

In this article two performances are analysed, Finnish artist Teemu Mäki's video performance The Good Friday (1989) and French artist Orlan's performance of metamorphosis The Re-incarnation of Saint Orlan or Image(s)/New Image(s) . The concept of heroic masculinity is problematized through Mäki's masochistic performance. Orlan undergoes cosmetic surgery in the name of art. Her performances are treated as a cultural statement about gender and as a visualization of the contemporary, commercial ideals of female beauty. This interpretation is framed by the art theoretical concept of the grotesque. In the article the grotesque is approached through the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Wolfgang Kayser and feminist appropriations of them by Mary Russo and Rosemarie Garland Thomson. Through these works the grotesque is defined as a concept by which phenomena are described in a state of transformation, a state in which they no longer fit into any fixed category. The ambivalence of the performances is stressed in this analysis. The grotesque is defined as a thoroughly political term. The politics of the grotesque is such that the term can be used to indicate that phenomena - bodies, genders and sexualities - are not as natural and self-evident as we would often like to think.