2012 Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts
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Andrea Zittel was born in Escondido, California. She received a BFA in painting and sculpture from San Diego State University in 1988, and an MFA in sculpture in 1990 from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Zittel’s sculptures and installations transform everything necessary for life—such as eating, sleeping, bathing, and socializing—into artful experiments in living. Blurring the lines between life and art, Zittel’s projects extend to her own home and wardrobe. Wearing a single outfit every day for an entire season, and constantly remodeling her home to suit changing demands and interests, Zittel continually reinvents her relationship to her domestic and social environment.
She has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of Art at Altria and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada. Zittel has been included in numerous group shows at renowned institutions in Germany, the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland. She has received awards such as the AICA Award for Best Architecture or Design Show in 2007, the College Art Association Distinguished Body of Work Award in 2006, and the Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2005. Zittel lives in Joshua Tree, California and New York.
Andrea Zittel is currently a Visting Critic at the MFA Visual Arts Program here at Columbia University.
