Collection: Vanessa Beecroft

Vanessa Beecroft (born 1969) is an Italian-American artist whose practice is built around the staged performance of groups of predominantly female bodies. Working since the early 1990s, Beecroft has developed a rigorous and controversial visual language in which performers are directed into precise formations, their appearance controlled through costume, nudity, hair and make-up, and their endurance tested over the duration of each event. Her performances have been staged at institutions including the Guggenheim Museum New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin and the Venice Biennale, and in collaboration with fashion houses including Louis Vuitton and Kanye West.

Beecroft's work sits at the intersection of performance, photography, fashion and institutional critique, generating images that are simultaneously seductive and unsettling. Her Alphabet Concept, developed for the inaugural exhibition at Espace Louis Vuitton in 2006, became the subject of an authorship dispute that halted further use of the work and sharpened its critical reception.

This collection brings together exhibition invitations, catalogues and printed ephemera related to Vanessa Beecroft and her exhibition history.