Vanessa Beecroft was born in Italy and now lives in Los Angeles. Her contemporary art is rooted in performance, and she frequently uses female models in her work to offer interpretations of various existential states. Beecroft’s work also interrogates issues of female body image in modern society, inspired by her own struggles with eating disorders. As well as performance, he creative work encompasses paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs. Her reputation was firmly established by the series of works called VB Performances. In these choreographed presentations, Beecroft questioned the notion of a perfect body and the uneasy relationship between audience and model, by using nude models alongside sculptures in plaster and marble.
More recently, Vanessa Beecroft has focussed on clothing to explore the relationship between a person’s inner and outer world, as well as what is signalled by a particular garment. She always takes into account the tension between the artwork itself and the place in which it is performed or presented. Beecroft documents her performances in photography and video, and these documents themselves become a part of her artwork. The politics of identity, gender, and voyeurism are recurring themes throughout her work, while she also probes the nature of the artistic audience.
