Vanessa Beecroft was born in 1969 in Genoa, Italy. She grew up in North-Italy and lived in London for a short period as a baby. Her Italian mother and British father separated when she was 3 years old. She saw her father and younger brother back when she was 15 years old. She grew up with her mother in an Italian village where strict rules were applied, she lived without television, car, telephone and according to strict vegan eating habits. Partly because of this, she had to contend with eating disorders, a theme that is often featured in her work. Also the female body has a central role in her oeuvre, in which she mainly alludes to voyeurism, narcissism, sexism, idealism and later ethnicity. From 1988 to 1993, she studied at the Brera Academy in Milan. In 1993 she brought her first performance, that she titled like all others with her initials ‘VB’. In those performances, she arranges female nude models like a tableau vivant that she documents with video or photography. Beginning of the 1990s she also created a series of drawings of scrawny female figures. These works show a personal sensitivity that express a suffering and reject any form of seduction. In 1996 she moved to America and settled in Los Angeles in 2019.