Vanessa Beecroft and the choreographed tableaux of her VB performances

Vanessa Beecroft has shaped performance and photography with her VB series of live tableaux since the 1990s, merging fashion codes, institutional critique and questions of the female body into rigorously staged works that still define her position today.

From the AD HOC NEWS Art Desk » Work Series & Retrospective Desk - The editors cover exhibitions, auctions, collections, prizes and artistic positions. Published: July 11, 2026 · Last checked: July 11, 2026, 8:15 PM

Vanessa Beecroft has built her artistic position around rigorously choreographed live tableaux of women, known collectively as the VB performances. These staged assemblies of models and performers, often documented as large-scale photographs, have made her one of the defining voices in performance and conceptual photography since the mid-1990s.

The VB series as a long-term work

When Vanessa Beecroft first presented VB01 in Milan in 1993, she introduced a format that would structure her practice for decades: a numbered series of performances combining live presence, strict compositional rules and photographic afterlives as works.

Across subsequent pieces such as VB35, VB46 or VB61, Beecroft typically arranges dozens of women in minimal settings, often in uniform clothing or nude, instructing them to hold positions for extended periods while viewers move around them as if the figures were living sculpture.

Retrospective view on performance and photography

Art-historically, the VB series sits between performance, installation and photography: the live events are time-based works, but Beecroft’s large-format color and black-and-white prints have entered museum and private collections as autonomous artworks.

Her tableaux make use of fashion casting methods and runway codes, yet they are resolved into static, almost classical compositions that recall history painting, institutional critique and body politics, especially around norms of femininity, whiteness and beauty.

The work core beyond the tableaux

Beyond the numbered VB performances, Vanessa Beecroft’s work includes videos and studies that examine how duration, exhaustion and exposure shape the experience of performers who stand as living images over extended time frames.

Her installations often keep the setting sparse: bare gallery floors, simple walls, sometimes subtle lighting shifts, which place full focus on the human presence and on how bodies become surfaces for projection by the viewer.

Where the artist stands now

Overall, Vanessa Beecroft’s practice continues to be anchored in the long-term evolution of her VB series and related photographic works, with her studio maintaining this focus without a publicly announced new exhibition date in the current window.

Key facts on Vanessa Beecroft

• Artist: Vanessa Beecroft
• Medium / Genre: Performance and photography (staged tableaux)
• Born: 1969, Genoa, Italy
• Place(s) of practice: Studio activity between Europe and the United States, with frequent institutional work in major museum contexts
• Active since: early 1990s, with VB01 in 1993 marking the start of her VB performance series
• Key work groups: VB performances, large-format photographic tableaux, video and performance documentation, body and fashion-based installations
• Current/last exhibition: work from the VB series has regularly appeared in institutional and gallery shows over recent years, but no narrowly dated new show in the immediate 30-day window is publicly documented in open sources
• Major collections: works by Vanessa Beecroft are held in significant private and public collections internationally, reflecting her established position in contemporary performance and photographic art
• Awards: Beecroft’s reception includes sustained international critical attention and institutional support, though no major new prize within the current timeframe is prominently recorded in open-access sources
• Next date: currently no announced date in the 30-day window

Frequently asked questions about Vanessa Beecroft

What defines Vanessa Beecroft’s VB performances?
Her VB performances consist of live tableaux of women arranged in strict compositional formations, often in uniform dress or nude, held over long durations and later translated into large-format photographic works that circulate independently in collections.

How do Vanessa Beecroft’s works relate to fashion and the body?
Beecroft draws on fashion casting, runway staging and beauty norms, yet she freezes these codes into static, sometimes uncomfortable compositions that foreground questions of objectification, agency and how spectators project meaning onto the performers’ bodies.

Where can collectors encounter works by Vanessa Beecroft?
Collectors meet Beecroft’s practice primarily through her photographic prints and video documentation of performances, which surface periodically at galleries and auctions, as well as through loans to institutional exhibitions in contemporary art museums.

This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.