Performances, 2000

Vanessa Beecroft is an Italian contemporary artist living in Los Angeles. Her work is mostly performance-based and often involves the use of female models as living art objects. Until recently, her work also involved the use of nude models. Her subjects depicted differing states of existence or reality. Moreover, Beecroft’s work is also inspired via her personal struggle with an eating disorder. As a result, she consistently explores body image issues and femininity in contemporary society. Furthermore, she is an artist known for many mediums including performance, drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture. Beecroft gained fame for her most notable works--VB Performances. These highly choreographed performance works examine what constitutes a perfect body, as well as the relationships that exist between the audience and models. For instance, in her 2011 performance VB67,nude female models were assembled among marble and plaster sculptures. This perspective distorts the traditional art viewing experience while examining the relationships and various meanings between the sculptures and living female models. Her more recent work, however, has experienced a shift to models in time period clothing, military garb, and other clothed models with pointed references. Vanessa Beecroft's work addresses various societal concerns and interpretations, as well as the differing relationships that exist between the inner and outer worlds. At her performances, photographs and video recordings are frequently made. In part, as documentation of the live performances, but also as separate works of art that are representative of a different perspective on the experience. Each performance is produced for a specific location and often references the historical, social, and/or political associations of the place where the performance is held. Beecroft's work interweaves probing questions regarding societal concerns, gender and identity politics, as well as voyeurism in the examination of the complex relationships that exist between the audience, models, and interpretation. (Artist website)