Vanessa Beecroft: VB94

Vanessa Beecroft’s performance VB94 will take place on 8 December 2022 from 6 pm to 9 pm at the Regional Gallery of Sicily – Palazzo Abatellis, in Palermo’s historic centre. A group of models and a series of  previously unseen sculptures, executed by the artist in her Los Angeles studio, will be presented as a connection between past and present and between stasis and movement.
The project, presented in collaboration with the Amici dei Musei Siciliani Association and with the support of the Regional Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, has been conceived by the artist specifically for Palazzo Abatellis, which houses the most important Sicilian public museum of Renaissance art, having been transformed into a museum in 1953-1954 by Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa.
The artist, who left Italy for the United States in 1996, returns to Palermo for the second time – after her 2008 performance VB62 at Santa Maria dello Spasimo – with a project that combines art-historical memory with personal artistic experience cultivated abroad. On this occasion, Vanessa Beecroft will present numerous female heads modeled in clay and cast in ceramic, bronze and wax. The artist has designed and executed the sculptures’ bases in refurbished wood.