Amy Bessone (b. 1970, New York) is an American artist working and living in Los Angeles.

Bessone’s art challenges cultural representations of the female body, incorporating various art historical and pop culture references, from Greco-Roman nudes to dime-store porcelain pinups. Subverting notions of female figuration and the male gaze, Bessone’s work addresses the dichotomies of high and low, gender and form. Using the physical body as a literal and conceptual framework, the artist exposes the fetishism of objects, both in the art world and as feminist theory.

The artist’s longstanding engagement with the female form relates to her desire to develop an artistic practice that is accessible. As she has commented: ‘What is more universally relatable than the human body?’ Bessone’s sculptures assume the shape of a truncated female torso, just above the breasts and at the top of the thighs, reduced to just the “essentials.” Taking the blank vessel as a starting point, the artist glazes, paints, marks, incises, makes additions, edits, deconstructs, reassembles, binds, casts and presents this legion of women. Executed in ceramic or bronze, they also evoke classical statuary, “broken” but revered pieces like the Venus of Milo or the Nike of Samothrace.