Andrea Zittel - Public Performance of the Self - Berlin

“I believe the act of living is, itself, a work of art – a large, uncontrollable, superlatively messy and complex work, in which we invent not only ourselves, but the world around us.” –Andrea Zittel

Since the early 1990s, Andrea Zittel has used the arena of day-to-day life to develop and test prototypes for living structures and situations in order to understand the world at large.

Gallery space with cream walls showing multiple framed artworks arranged in clusters, polished concrete floor, exposed ceiling beams with track lighting.

Close-up of framed exhibition panel featuring text about "The Public Performance of the Self" with accompanying photographs of retail spaces.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-2-2024 Ikea with Emmett), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
59.3 × 126.5 × 3.5 cm | 23 3/8 × 49 7/8 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Andrea Zittel – Public Performance of the Self – Berlin

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-2-2024 Ikea with Emmett), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-2-2024 Ikea with Emmett), 2025

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Throughout her nearly forty-year practice, Zittel has employed rules to create parameters that she then explores from within the context of her daily life. Since 2020, she has adopted a new set of criteria for art-making that were developed to be both practical and ideological:

1. Work that emerges directly from everyday life.

2. Work that can be made anywhere – at the kitchen table or in a hotel room.

3. Work that is efficient to produce.

4. Work that requires little space to store and is easy to transport.

5. Work that embodies what it means to exist and participate in our culture today.

Black-framed display showing text and multiple photographs documenting performance art in various indoor gallery and museum settings.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (7-7-2024 Whitney Biennial), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
81.3 × 126.4 × 3.5 cm | 32 × 49 3/4 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Exhibition panel with descriptive text and photographs showing performance documentation in outdoor forest settings with large trees.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-20-2024 General Sherman Tree, Sequoia), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
67.4 × 135 × 3.5 cm | 26 1/2 × 53 1/8 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (7-7-2024 Whitney Biennial), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (7-7-2024 Whitney Biennial), 2025

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-20-2024 General Sherman Tree, Sequoia), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-20-2024 General Sherman Tree, Sequoia), 2025

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Framed artwork displaying text and photographs of performance art conducted in rocky, mountainous outdoor terrain with multiple participants.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (8-11-2024 Idyllwild), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
66.3 × 122.7 × 3.5 cm | 26 × 48 1/4 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Framed artwork displaying text and photographs documenting street performance, including urban sidewalk and indoor institutional spaces.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (4-6-2024 Seattle), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
59.4 × 117.8 × 3.5 cm | 23 3/8 × 46 3/8 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (8-11-2024 Idyllwild), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (8-11-2024 Idyllwild), 2025

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (4-6-2024 Seattle), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (4-6-2024 Seattle), 2025

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Wide view of gallery wall displaying five separate framed artworks, each containing text and photographic documentation arranged in modular compositions.

These guiding principles underpin Zittel’s performances of activities such as shopping, travelling with her partner, or running errands with her college-aged son.

Large horizontal frame containing text panel and photographs showing grocery store performances with produce sections and shopping aisles.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-9-2024 Erewhon with Justine), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
59.4 × 175.2 × 3.5 cm | 23 3/8 × 69 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-9-2024 Erewhon with Justine), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-9-2024 Erewhon with Justine), 2025

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Public Performance of the Self (9-9-2024 Erewhon with Justine) (2025), for instance, shows the artist in a supermarket: at the end of a packaged food aisle, inspecting fruit and selecting from neat rows of vegetables. A description logs the performance’s date, duration, location and attire, as well as companions and photographers, mirroring the kind of information that features in social media posts, including shoe brands, makeup and hairstyles – the requisite details of making oneself public.

Person in plaid skirt and dark top standing at gas station pump, filling vehicle tank during daytime performance documentation.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-20-2024 Gas in Sequoia), 2025
Detail showing her wearing A–Z Personal Uniform (Fall 2024)

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Figure in hat and casual clothing walking on rocky path through desert landscape with scattered boulders and sparse vegetation.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (4-28-2024 Tahquitz hike), 2025
Detail showing her wearing A–Z Personal Uniform (Spring 2024)

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Person in black outfit standing on modern architectural bridge or walkway with geometric white structure and urban skyline background.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (2-19-2024 Mexico City Reforma shopping mall), 2025
Detail showing her wearing A–Z Personal Uniform (Winter 2024)

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In this context, Zittel further investigates the fine line between freedom and restriction through her A–Z Personal Uniforms, which she wore during Public Performance of the Self. A project that has been ongoing since 1991, the artist considers these garments a form of public sculpture. Each ‘uniform’ is worn exclusively throughout the season for which it is made, challenging the associations between personal liberation and choice with the market demand for constant variety.

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Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-20-2024 Gas in Sequoia), 2025
Detail showing her wearing A–Z Personal Uniform (Fall 2024)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-20-2024 Gas in Sequoia), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
59.3 × 89.6 × 3.5 cm | 23 3/8 × 35 1/4 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (9-20-2024 Gas in Sequoia), 2025

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (4-28-2024 Tahquitz hike), 2025
Detail showing her wearing A–Z Personal Uniform (Spring 2024)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (4-28-2024 Tahquitz hike), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
65.3 × 117.7 × 3.5 cm | 25 3/4 × 46 3/8 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (4-28-2024 Tahquitz hike), 2025

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (2-19-2024 Mexico City Reforma shopping mall), 2025
Detail showing her wearing A–Z Personal Uniform (Winter 2024)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (2-19-2024 Mexico City Reforma shopping mall), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
65.3 × 116.4 × 3.5 cm | 25 3/4 × 45 7/8 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (2-19-2024 Mexico City Reforma shopping mall), 2025

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Zittel’s interest in performance first began in the early 1990s, inspired by Allan Kaprow’s conception of performance as the execution of a task or function, rather than an artifice created for an audience. Kaprow, in turn, was influenced by sociologist Erving Goffman’s 1959 work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman suggests that in our routine rituals, we are constantly performing our status, identities, roles and occupations.

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.

Gallery wall showing five framed pieces in a row, each containing text and photographic elements documenting various performance locations.

Both in everyday life, and in the representations that we create of these lives, we are all public performers of ourselves – and it is through these performances that we come into being.

Large frame with text and two photographs showing performance in desert salt flat landscape with expansive sky and distant mountains.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-30-2024 Spiral Jetty), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
68.3 × 137.5 × 3.5 cm | 27 × 54 1/8 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-30-2024 Spiral Jetty), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-30-2024 Spiral Jetty), 2025

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Exhibition panel featuring photographs of institutional building exterior and group of people, with accompanying descriptive text about performance.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-19-2024 Getty), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
68.3 × 134.6 × 3.5 cm | 27 × 53 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-19-2024 Getty), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
68.3 × 134.6 × 3.5 cm | 27 × 53 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-19-2024 Getty), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-19-2024 Getty), 2025

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By turning her outings into moments of research or making work, Zittel created a framework that allowed her to examine the tensions between public and private, the desire for ‘the real’, and how the pursuit of authenticity frequently morphs into something more staged or artificial when presented to an audience.

Frame displaying text and photographs of construction or work site performance with people in safety vests in mountainous terrain.

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-29-2024 Powder Mountain), 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
85.6 × 112.5 × 3.5 cm | 33 3/4 × 44 1/4 × 1 3/8 inches (framed)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP

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Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-29-2024 Powder Mountain), 2025 (detail)

Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self (5-29-2024 Powder Mountain), 2025

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Ultimately, Zittel’s project invites a critical reflection on whether creating art within the context of one’s own life fosters greater authenticity or merely represents another mode of creation.