Vanessa Beecroft

Vanessa Beecroft, born in Genoa, Italy, has been living in Los Angeles for several years. Her work has been exhibited in numerous international galleries and museums, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Venice Biennale. Since the beginning, her works have sparked debates and controversies, particularly due to her use of the female body and the power dynamics she stages.
She was quickly recognized for her ability to explore female identity and the role of women in society through various performances, drawings, and sculptures. Her first performance, VB01 (since all her performances bear her initials and a number), took place in 1993, marking the beginning of this reflection on an identity in constant evolution, changeable and fragmented. Her bodies seem subjected to the massive transformations of history and draw patterns and symbols from cinema, art history, or fashion (she has also collaborated with Kanye West for his short film Runaway and with several fashion houses such as Valentino or Vuitton), always filtering them through her personal history. Her sculptural ensembles often emerge from performances executed like living paintings, where, in addition to the models, she presents plaster sculptures created from molds of the heads of these same women, playing on references to classical images subtly overturned through scale, colors, asymmetries, or makeup.