Ванесса Бикрофт: Өнер мен қоғамдық мәселелерді өрнектеуші суретші

Italian born American performance artist

Vanessa Beecroft (born April 25, 1969) is an Italian born American contemporary performance artist; she also works with photography, video art, sculpture, and painting. Many of her works have made use of professional models, sometimes in large numbers and sometimes naked or nearly so, to stage tableaux vivants. She works in the United States, and is based in Los Angeles Her early work was focused on gender and appeared to be autobiographical; her later work is focused on race. Starting in 2008 she began working with Kanye West on collaborations and commercial projects. After she was born, her family briefly moved to Holland Park, west London. From 1988 to 1993 she attended Brera Academy in Milan, Italy. The "Book of Food" documented Beecroft's bulimic eating habits and was referenced again in her later work, but it was separate from the performances. She moved to the United States in 1996, at the invitation of art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, settling in New York City. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Van Abbemuseum, Strict rules were imposed on the models' behavior during the performances; they were instructed not to engage with the audience. VB25 (1996) performance took place at Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands, with seven identical looking young women wearing fake eyelashes and red nail polish, each dressed in a polo neck pullover, white underwear, tights, and high heels. VB35: Show (1998) took place at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; twenty women stood in the museum for two hours in a circular arrangement in order to mirror the architecture. and the production was done by Yvonne Force Villareal, and Doreen Remen. VB45 (2004) took place at Terminal 5 of the John F. Kennedy Airport with 36 young women standing in formation in the sunken waiting area, wearing only Afro wigs, black body paint, and silver shackles on their ankles. VB51 (2002) was her first filmed performance, it took place in Schloss Vinsebeck, Stenheim, Germany. VB61, Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf? (2007), one of Beecroft's most politically engaged performances, was presented the 52nd Venice Biennale. It involved "approximately 30 Sudanese women with their skin painted, lying face down on a white canvas on the ground, simulating dead bodies piled on top of one another", representing the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. VB65 (March 2009) performance at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC) in Milan, Italy, featured a "Last Supper" of twenty African immigrant men, dressed formally in suits (some without shoes), drinking water, eating chicken and brown bread without cutlery. It highlighted the relationships among body, sculpture, and an iconographical reference to the nearby ruins of Pompeii. The models were staged near marble sculpture statues and the stone was in various states including polished, rough, and in blocks and slabs. For the same event, Beecroft placed models both black and white on the shelves next to Louis Vuitton bags in a "human alphabet". In 2007 the Louis Vuitton company apologized to Dutch graphic designer Anthon Beeke for mimicking his "Naked Ladies Alphabet" design without his consent. In 2018, Beecroft and Kim Kardashian collaborated on a series of nude photos of Kardashian that were displayed on social media for the release of Kardashian's perfume, which had a "Kardashian body shaped bottle".

Since 2008, Beecroft has been collaborating on work with artist Kanye West. On the Kanye West music tour, the Yeezus Tour (October 2013 – September 2014), Beecroft designed the sets and choreography.

Her performance work about gender was often critiqued for being a "post feminist statement about fashion or pandering to a corrupted way of seeing". Her later work deals with race, and she has made a series of racially insensitive remarks in interviews. Beecroft’s failed attempt to adopt Sudanese twins was the topic of the documentary The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins (2008) by Pietra Brettkelly, which was included in the Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Documentary Competition. The film presents Beecroft as a "hypocritically self aware, colossally colonial pomo narcissist" and chronicles her "damaging quotes and appalling behavior" as she attempts to adopt the orphans for use in an art exhibit.

Vanessa Beecroft was previously married to marketer Greg Durkin. They lived in Cold Spring Harbor, New York together for many years. The marriage ended in divorce. Durkin and Beecroft had two sons together (born in 2001 and 2004). Later, she married to photographer Federico Spadoni. Beecroft and Spadoni have one daughter and one son together (born 2009 and 2012).

A select list of exhibition catalogues by Beecroft, listed in ascending order by publication year. (English, French, Italian).