VB Intervention

2002: Performance + Photography

In their parasitical performance VB Intervention, the Toxic Titties infiltrated Vanessa Beecroft’s performance VB46 at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills.

Cast as models in the performance, the Toxic Titties hijacked Beecroft’s work and subverted her vision by engaging the other performers in a critical dialogue and eventually unionizing them, forcing up the cost of their labor.

Toxic Titties collective members Cassils, Clover Leary, and Julia Steinmetz then co-authored a paper called Behind Enemy Lines: Inside Vanessa Beecroft. This is an insider account that assesses and rejects the dominant claims surrounding Beecroft’s work. It reads VB46 against the grain, asserting the active role that our bodies play in revealing the troubling mechanism of its production. This essay was published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (2006), and reprinted in the edited volume Commerce by Artists published by Art Metropole (2011).

Image + media credits for this page >>

Cassils
VB Intervention No. 4
(Guerrilla Intervention into a Vanessa Beecroft VB46 Performance, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills), 2002
Courtesy of the artist

Cassils
VB Intervention No. 2
(Guerrilla Intervention into a Vanessa Beecroft VB46 Performance, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills), 2002
Courtesy of the artist

Cassils
VB Intervention No. 1
(Guerrilla Intervention into a Vanessa Beecroft VB46 Performance, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills), 2002


Cassils
VB Intervention No. 3
(Guerrilla Intervention into a Vanessa Beecroft VB46 Performance, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills), 2002
Courtesy of the artist