Vanessa Beecroft’s performances constitute one of the most recognisable chapters in the history of contemporary Italian art. Since her first action, VB01, at Galleria Luciano Inga-Pin in Milan in 1993, she has realised more than sixty performances worldwide, arranging groups of women—often nude or in underwear—into tableaux vivants of unsettling stillness in museums, galleries, and public spaces. Her central subject is the female body as both an aesthetic and political object, investigated through the tension between standardised imagery and lived presence. Institutions that have presented her work include the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1998); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2003, retrospective); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2005); the National Gallery, London (2006); PAC Milan (2009); and the Venice Biennale (1997, 2011, 2015). She has collaborated with Miuccia Prada, Tom Ford, and Kanye West. She graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and lives and works in Los Angeles.