Sculpting identity: Chana Orloff and her portraits

Chana Orloff, a prolific sculptor during the first half of the twentieth century, completed hundreds of portraits of her contemporaries during her lifetime. Scholars have examined these portraits more generally within the overall context of her work. Still, however, the scholarly discourse on the artist herself is limited, lacking an extensive analysis on the portraits themselves. Utilizing a selection of Orloff’s portraits, this thesis seeks to understand her work in terms of the reconciliatory role played by portraiture in expressing various aspects of the artist’s own identity. In particular, this analysis hopes to better understand the artist’s personal and professional contacts in Paris as well as in Palestine. As an artist, woman, and Jew, Orloff’s portraits grant insight into her own relationship with these categorizations and alignment with various trends within a feminist discourse as well as French and Zionist political movements. As such, this thesis takes into consideration multiple methodological approaches, making use of a bibliographical, formalist, feminist, and social art historical perspectives. Ultimately, this investigation hopes to reveal a fundamental intersection between Orloff’s self-conception and the characterization of her surroundings.