In the 90s the artist ORLAN does "Operations - Performance". Art ORLAN questions the modified body has become a place of public debate. Horrified by these scarified, tattooed, painted faces, the Westerners, supposedly " civilized " peoples, who discovered the Others' body ornaments during the first great explorations towards the end of the eighteenth century, associated these so-called primitive peoples to barbarism and an irreducible "savagery". Later on these tegumentary signs were sublimated by designers such as Jean-Paul Gauthier, John Galliano and therefore sported by celebrities. Likewise some American artists in the 1980's (Lyle Tuttle, Sailor Jerry Collins...) launched an "aesthetic" tattoo fashion transforming their bodies into works of art. Today could the Western fashion of tegumentary signs - deprived of their original meaning- be a way to re-invent how Man in traditional and even prehistoric societies came into being as such? In recent archeological discoveries, it would appear that as far back as prehistoric times : (...) Man "humanized" his body with signs of culture, whether by inlaying his flesh, painting his skin, choosing what to wear or doing his hair and body hair....: the one who remained in a state of nature could not be distinguished from the brute." (C. Lévi-Strauss 2001 : 216)
