Vanessa Beecroft’s ethereal performance and sculpture exhibition explore Sicily’s cultural history

Walking through Palermo’s historical centre, the stunning old city soon reveals itself as a palimpsest. Street names, edifices and ornaments often disclose traces of the many cultures, rulers and religions that have travelled across the Mediterranean and left a mark on the island. It is discernible in the architecture, customs and cuisine. And it is legible, to nearly impossibly utopian degrees, in Sicily’s spirit of inclusivity. Genoa-born artist Vanessa Beecroft, who staged a previous tableau vivant here in 2008, returned to Palermo on 8 December 2022 with her latest one-time performance, which paid tribute to Sicily’s dizzyingly diverse cultural and historical narratives. 

Titled VB94, to indicate the work’s sequence within the artist’s practice, the new performance was specifically created for a small gallery inside Palazzo Abatellis, a museum that houses the Regional Gallery of Sicily. But just like most buildings in Palermo, the Palazzo has seen several incarnations. Originally built as an aristocratic residence in the 15th century, it later became a cloistered convent for 400 years, until the Second World War. After the last of the nuns had left, the palace was transformed into a museum in 1953-1954 by Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, and is considered a masterpiece of international museology thanks to Scarpa’s extraordinary exhibition design. It seems there’s no better place to stage a signature Beecroft work – which links the past and present, stasis and movement, art and life –than these history-filled stone quarters remodelled by a modernist master. 

‘I idealised this museum so much that now I feel like I’m in a dream,’ Beecroft said on the eve of the performance. ‘The first time I visited this museum was in 1987, and since then I’ve considered it the most beautiful museum in the world. Antonello da Messina’s Annunciation and the bust of Eleonor of Aragon by Francesco Laurana made a profound impression on me. Over the years I have continued to visit it, and when the possibility of making a performance here materialised, I thought about how to express my relationship with such a special place.

‘I trust that the city of Palermo has a deep understanding of the complexity and dialectic of my work and this makes me feel safe,’ she added. 

In the palazzo’s moonlit courtyard, visitors queued to enter a small gallery where a group of models, draped in variously diaphanous fabrics and wearing golden leather shoes, stood or sat amid Beecroft’s sculptures of heads and busts cast in ceramic, bronze and wax. An original soundtrack by composer Gustave Rudman (of Euphoria fame, amongst many other accomplishments) induced an ethereal, timelessly thrilling mood. In fact, this is the first time that the Los Angeles-based artist has combined live models with sculpture and sound. 

While the sculptures referenced some of the artefacts in the museum’s collection of Renaissance art, the performers – women from Palermo, some from a lineage of local aristocracy while others are first or second-generation immigrants – evoked the women who have inhabited the dwelling throughout the centuries, from the noblewomen of the Abatellis family to the nuns of the Santa Maria della Pietà convent. A porcelain-skinned performer was nursing her baby but retired to a back room as the infant grew tired. 

For models, Beecroft’s tableaux are demanding feats of endurance. Participants must stay in character for several hours, keeping movement to a barely perceptible minimum. ‘It was very challenging,’ Emma Preisler, a yoga teacher who embodied a goddess figure in the three-hour performance, said the following morning. ‘It was an exchange between me and the audience; from my spot, it looked like they were touched deep inside, somewhere where it hurt.’ 

‘But it helped that Vanessa was in the room; every time I was in doubt I searched for her and that became the golden thread carrying me through.’ 

Vanessa Beecroft’s one-time performance ‘VB94’, took place on 8 December 8 at Palazzo Abatellis. The artist’s sculptures will be on view at the museum until January 8, 2023. vanessabeecroft.com