Born with the name Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte on 30 May 1947 in Saint-Etienne, ORLAN began her first performances in 1964.
Initially she measured city spaces with her body, letting herself be dragged along the ground and the unit of measurement she had invented was, in fact, the ORLAN.
She is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most important protagonist of post-organic or post-human art.
She is one of the main exponents of Body Art, an artistic movement born in the sixties that places the performer's body at the center of attention.

Body Art, a term improperly used today in the context of the creation of tattoos and piercings, was born with the desire to provoke, to shake beliefs regarding art.
Inspired by the futurists, dadaists and surrealists, she discovered the artist's body as the absolute protagonist.

The first to do something similar was Marcel Duchamp, who in 1919 had shaved his hair with a star on the top of his neck and a strip joining it to the forehead.