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Andrea Zittel

@andreazittel

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How to live?

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Full circle moment! 🌖
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When I was a baby art history student in my junior year of undergrad, I picked up a copy of my favorite magazine @dwellmagazine and saw @andreazittel on the cover. I wondered, who was this enigmatic person stepping out of an airstream trailer in the middle of the desert? 🌵
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I dove headfirst into uncovering every bit of info I could find on Andrea, learning about her home studio / art installation in Joshua Tree called A-Z West, where she created her “experiments in living” and launched her nonprofit artist residency @highdeserttestsites. I convinced my advisor to let me write my undergrad thesis on Zittel, exploring the way she blurred the lines between life, art, design, and architecture. Her work activated something in me—a throughline about artful, functional design that I continue exploring today. 🏜️
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Fast forward to 2013, and my friends @jojiejewels and @hossly invited me to visit A-Z West for a work party helping install a piece by @misterstella in the Joshua Tree desert. We got to sleep in the Wagon Stations, I was in heaven. 💛
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10+ years later, I pitched a story on Andrea and @highdeserttestsites to the New York Times on the occasion of HDTS’s 25th anniversary. Getting to visit again, interview Andrea, and talk with legendary artists @litaalbuquerque, @radicalhospitality, and @carolynpennypackerriggs about their experiences with HDTS was a dream come true. I was pinching myself the entire time!
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Thank you to my amazing editor @mcmccrea for guiding me in telling this story, which involves hundreds of artists, dozens of art installations in the Joshua Tree desert, and the woman who designed the beautifully open-ended frame that contains it all: @andreazittel. HDTS represents everything I love about art: it connects people to nature and community in a way that could only happen in this place, at this time, helping us find a sense of belonging on this planet. 🌎
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Link in bio to read my NYT story! taken in Joshua Tree, California by @andreazittel

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4 months ago

Two weeks ago my show “Public Performance of the Self” opened at @spruethmagers . These works hinge on the dual meaning of the term ‘to perform’ - which means both to conduct an action and to present oneself to an audience.

Essentially, I perform myself as I participate in the various activities of everyday life in the public realm. The performances are then written up in language that morphs the dry descriptions of 1970s performance art with the level of detail often found in social media posts. (What I am wearing, cosmetics, hairstyle, etc). The photos are taken with a cellphone by friends and family who are with me at the time of the outings.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how this performance of the self has been amplified even more in recent decades, first through the arrival of reality TV and then through social media, which puts a premium on how we perform every aspect of our intimate personal lives. Both in everyday life, and in the representations these lives, we are all public performers of ourselves—and it is through these performances that we come into being.

*Huge thanks to the collaborators who helped capture these moments: @skulls_example , @justine4good @camillacarper and @emmett.dodge by @andreazittel

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a year ago

Maya Livio (@mayadot)’s essay, “Modeling Home: A Call for New Approaches to Art and Research Residencies,” from our recent issue, is now online!

Livio writes, “Hospes is a linguistic trick, a reminder that hosting and guesting are never binary. Those who are guests must on other occasions serve as hosts, and vice versa. The word hospes makes visible the fluid dynamics of reciprocal responsibility, all are active participants in creating conditions of home and well-being.”

Read the full essay online via the link in our Story 💟. by @andreazittel

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a year ago

I’ve been quiet here for the last few years. In my head I’ve been calling this period my hermit hole. I feel like I’ve been in a cave, but in a good way. I needed this. Taking time off from everything public has given me time and perspective to recalibrate major aspects of my life.

I wrote some new rules (for myself) for making art that I’ll share at some point. Originally I wondered if I would stop making art if I didn’t have shows or deadlines. (I gave myself permission to stop.) But that didn’t happen, and instead my work is getting pretty weird. I’ll be showing this new work at @spruethmagers in Berlin next week - more about that soon, too.

In the meantime I turn 60 today which feels like such an impressive accomplishment. What do I want for this next phase? Enough privacy and solitude to feel safe and to evolve as an artist. And since I seem to grow the most through experiments and mistakes, I’m wishing for new adventures and some really good mistakes. by @andreazittel

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a year ago

This is the last weekend of my show of the third decade of Personal Uniforms at @regenprojects . What I can I say about this project? The Personal Uniform project is one of my all time favorite undertakings and underlays the entire span of my mature life as an artist. Even after thirty years it still feels fresh and sometimes uncomfortable, yet at the same time utterly liberating.

The last decade of my life was a hard one. I spent much of it maturing as an artist and parent and always juggling more than I was humanly capable of - and when I look at these garments I see all of that reflected in them. A kind of stoicism and resilience and hopefully grace and brief moments of sheer aesthetic pleasure. My obsession with brooches and spots of color amidst all that black. And the long skirt which become something of a personal trademark.

This month I also did an email interview with Vogue about the project - if you are curious to read, it comes up with a quick search on the internet. taken in Regen Projects by @andreazittel

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3 years ago

Sharing a few final images from “Personal Patterns” at @kunstmuseen_krefeld since instagram doesn’t like to mix horizontal and vertical 🙄 images. taken in Haus Esters by @andreazittel

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4 years ago

It’s so hard to believe that “Personal Patterns” - my exhibition at @kunstmuseen_krefeld‘s Haus Esters is closing soon - it really feels like we just installed it yesterday. This epic journey started pre-pandemic in 2019 with the opportunity to create a permanent site-specific installation for the garden house just adjacent to Haus Esters. (The garden house was an very early prefabricated house by the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau)

Then in Fall of 2022 we installed a full fledged exhibition, curated by Juliane Duft (@juliane_ja) in Haus Esters - a residential house designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe that is owned and programed by the Krefeld Museum. I can’t say enough good things about this museum - from their brilliant director Katia Baudin to the smart and powerful (female) curators who I worked with or met during my time there.

These days I’m slowing down and moving into a quiet period with fewer exhibitions and no public activities - but what a nice note to end things on. taken in Haus Esters by @andreazittel

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4 years ago

Hello from Joshua Tree... I’m writing this from our new house, a few miles from A-Z West. On January 1 this year, my partner Katy, son Emmett and I (and three dogs, two cats, and plethora of potted plants) moved here. We love our new place – it’s private and much more manageable. Renovating a small, old house has been a rough ride with the shortages on labor and jacked-up prices on materials, but progress is happening.

It took three months to move out of A-Z West in preparation for the HDTS takeover – to be honest, that period was pretty stressful. But then I got to experience three months of my “new life.” My plan was/is to take a break (maybe forever) from everything public. No more exhibitions, teaching, lectures, press, social media.... I have been wanting to see what it would be like to live life as my practice, as the ultimate culmination of where my work been headed for all these decades. Though I recognize that there are probably nuances in how this will play out in real life terms.

In the meantime @highdeserttestsites took over A-Z West. (A-Z West has traditionally been the purview of own practice, and HDTS supports the work of other artists, though the two have functioned in tandem since they started.) And they pulled off the massively ambitious #HDTS2022.

But as many of you know, 2022 has been a rough year for non-profits, especially for a small nonprofit going through a big growth spurt. Over the summer, we realized it would be necessary to restructure HDTS to make it more financially sustainable – this required focusing more fully on our base at A-Z West (rather than on extended sites throughout the area), and also working to generate more of our overhead internally, e.g. by renting out my home and the guest cabin, and by expanding @azwestworks (continued in comments) taken in Joshua Tree, California by @andreazittel

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4 years ago

The last big question: What will happen to A-Z West? On Wednesday this week the board of High Desert Test Sites voted for @highdeserttestsites to take over A-Z West. Some of you may know that we’ve had discussions with several institutions this year, and while a larger institutional partnership may still be in the cards - this is is a step that will take a time and consideration. In the meantime we are moving forward to formalize what has always been a deeply symbiotic relationship between HDTS and A-Z West. This makes so much sense on so many levels, and will enable us to turn A-Z West into the resource for the community and for artists that I always envisioned. Also it has not been publicly announced yet, but over the summer I stepped down as director of HDTS and transitioned to a seat on the board. Vanesa Zendejas is now Director and⁠ Elena Yu is Programming Manager. I have so much admiration and respect for Vanesa and Elena’s vision - and also for our amazing and very brave board.⁠⁠
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(Also for those of you who are curious about the difference between A-Z West and High Desert Test Sites: A-Z West is my home, studio and land dedicated to my own experimental living practice. High Desert Test Sites is a non-profit arts entity that works with artists whose practices explore the intersection between contemporary art and life at large. The HDTS sites include many different pieces of land scatted throughout the Morongo basin. For more info: www.highdeserttestsites.com⁠)⁠
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Photo by @practice_studies taken in A - Z West by @andreazittel

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5 years ago

So here is the first part of the news. I will be moving away from A-Z West at the end of this year (two months from now!) To answer some of the questions I've been getting: Yes, I am staying in the Joshua Tree area. Yes, I will be giving up my studio. I will be transitioning into a different kind of practice that is less object/product based, and focuses more fully on life and the act of living. No, you can't really "exhibit" this kind of practice and that is totally OK with me. More about the future of A-Z West coming next. (photo by Sarah Lyon) taken in A - Z West by @andreazittel

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5 years ago

21 years ago I closed escrow on the cabin and five acres that would grow into A-Z West. So much has happened since then, and soon there will be even more changes which I’ll describe in posts to follow. But in the meantime just want to take a moment to celebrate this place and to appreciate how much I have grown and learned from living here. taken in A - Z West by @andreazittel

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5 years ago

We have a handful of tickets left for the A-Z West tours this Saturday**Link in bio. Come celebrate it not being 100 degrees in the desert this weekend with a guided stroll around the compound! by @andreazittel

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5 years ago