After 9 years of silence in the States, Vanessa Beecroft returned to Deitch Studios in Queens with an installation that blended performance with sculpture. In VB64, life-sized human casts in gesso rested on coffin-like bases beside 20 white-painted naked women. In an adjacent room, there were more bodies, this time painted black. Beecroft was inspired by the Sicilian funerary sculpture of the Renaissance and chose this space for its Cathedral-like quality, even setting up a bright light behind the gallery windows to look like sunshine through stained glass. The three-hour performance conjured images of the plaster cast bodies of victims of Pompeii’s “Garden of the Fugitives” and was a stark contrast to her older performance collaborations with high-end fashion brands.

Photography by Carlotta Manaigo.