Vanessa Beecroft

(Italian, born 1969)

Vanessa Beecroft is an Italian performance artist, photographer, and painter known for her large-scale, conceptual performances, or “living paintings,” which are often performed by nude or semi-clothed women. She was born on April 25, 1969 in Genoa, Italy and first studied at the Civico Liceo Artistico Nicolò Barabino in Genoa. At the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, she staged one of her most famous performances, B61, Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf?, a response to the Darfur genocide. In this work, Sudanese women laid face down, simulating corpses. She has also staged performances at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1998, the Gagosian Gallery in London in 2000, and at the Gagosian Gallery in California. As an artist whose work is frequently compared to fashion events, Beecroft has worked with designers and celebrities. In 2010, she art directed Kanye West’s Runaway video, and since then she has frequently collaborated with the rapper on choreography for his tours and fashion shows. West and Beecroft collaborated on Nebuchadnezzar, an opera that premiered in 2019, and she has also photographed his wife, Kim Kardashian. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.