Artist Vanessa Beecroft on the Power of the Female Body
Artist Vanessa Beecroft stages provocative and powerful performances that have a foothold in both the fashion and art worlds.
Over the course of 30 years and 25 performances, Vanessa Beecroft has built a solid international reputation. Born in Genoa, Italy, later moving to Brooklyn and then Los Angeles, Beecroft has presented her works in some of the biggest galleries and museums around the world, from the Venice Biennale to the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the Gagosian Gallery in London and Los Angeles. She also directed Kanye West’s Runaway video, and has since frequently collaborated with the rapper and designer. While she’s known for her performances, Beecroft also practices photography, drawing, painting, and sculpture.
When asked about the key moments of her career, Beecroft responds: “The move to the United States, the renunciation of bourgeois life, the battle I continue to fight to not conform to the system in which I live, and the birth of my four children.”
Here, the artist speaks to L’OFFICIEL about the role of women in her work, what influences her practice, and collaborating with fashion brands.
L’OFFICIEL: What inspired you to get into art?
Vanessa Beecroft: I couldn’t have done anything else. As a child, I spent my days drawing. It was a way to escape life, to prolong my dreams and visualize my desires—the world I wanted to see. I have always moved in the same direction, expanding upon it, but never changing course. Even when I collaborated with worlds outside of art, I always had my ultimate goal in mind, which was to express aesthetic and social judgments through my work. To show a particular and universal vision, through the exhibition of myself and my psyche embodied in a vast multiplicity of women. I was driven by the fact that art is free, that I had the absolute freedom to express what I wanted, often paying a high price, especially in the United States, but not giving up or losing the value of this freedom.
L’O: Women have always been at the center of your reflection. Have the current events in Iran, Afghanistan, and Ukraine affected your thinking? Or influenced your most recent or future works?
VB: Not directly, but they have amplified the sense of anxiety and the general psychological malaise related to my opinions on the world. War and violence against women—violence against anyone—are forms of human degeneration. My work on women is not about international events. It’s a specific, individual, existentialist, political work. It touches history and society, but not the immediate events of the news. I avoid following these events publicly because I do not believe the truth of the official press and the true purposes of these conflicts.
L’O: Is your thinking on exploitation and violence based on your own life or is it more theoretical?
VB: My reflection is dictated by my personal experience, my life, what I observe in relation to my movements, and often my intuition. I don’t work based on theories, but I use certain theories as hinges on the flow of my thoughts and experiences.
"I often work in a confrontational way. I use the world of fashion as a battleground for problems."
L’O: Which of your works do you consider most relevant today?
VB: Those in which the performance is integrated with plastic elements, such as the performance last December at Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo. The women in the performance are living incarnations of the sculptures, and the sculptures are an incarnation of the models. “VB62,” also made in Palermo, was the first example of this union between the women of performance and the women of chalk. During “VB62,” a group, initially homogeneous and united, was divided in two: the women of chalk remained inert in sleep and the women painted white moved slowly to get out of the initial position. Another important and recent work was “VB93,” made at Cinecittà’s studio 5, for its monumental dimension, and because it was the first attempt to film a performance with the purpose of making a film, not just a work of art.
L’O: How much does the location of the performance influence the conception of your work?
VB: The location is the starting point of the performance, in addition to the building and its history. The subject of the work remains the same, but the interaction with the public is related to the dialogue with the space, the people, the country, and the specific history.
L’O: You have collaborated with fashion brands from Moncler to Skims to Saint Laurent. Do you work within a specific frame of mind when you do it?
VB: Unfortunately, I often work in a confrontational way. I use the world of fashion as a battleground for problems. I do all this in a light, non-explicit way, as is often the case in the rest of my work.
L’O: Will you continue with painting?
VB: I’m starting now. It’s the ultimate dream.
