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. Early life and education Vanessa Beecroft was born April 25, 1969 in Genoa, Italy and raised in Santa Margherita Ligure and Malcesine near Lake Garda. Both of her parents were teachers; she was born to an Italian mother, Maria Luisa and a British father, Andrew Beecroft. After she was born, her family briefly moved to Holland Park, west London. Her parents divorced when she was three years old and she did not see her father or her younger brother again until she was 15 years old. Her mother raised Beecroft alone in a village in Italy in a strict vegan household with no cars, no television, and no phone. In childhood, she was hospitalized for overeating specific foods she thought would cleanse her system, and she struggled with an eating disorder. From 1988 to 1993 she attended Brera Academy in Milan, Italy. Her first art exhibition VB01 (1993) was in a gallery in Milan and featured a performance with other female students from Brera Academy wearing Beecroft's clothing, and sharing Beecroft's "Book of Food", a diary documenting her food consumption from 1985 and 1993. 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. Art Some common themes in the work include self discipline (of the models), voyeurism, and power relationships. Beecroft's artwork is often performance or installation-based with live human figures, but she also documents the performances with photography and video; this work is in many public museum and art collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Van Abbemuseum, amongst others. VB performances (1993–present) Many of