Mitte, Berlin
Andrea Zittel
Public Performance of the Self
Sprüth Magers“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. On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce a solo exhibition of the artist’s latest project, Public Performance of the Self. Zittel’s newest work hinges on the dual meaning of the term ‘to perform’, which signifies both to conduct an action and to present oneself to an audience. Zittel ‘performs herself’ participating in the various activities of everyday life in the public realm while documenting with a phone camera and written reports. With subtle dry humour, Zittel touches on both personal and universal themes—mental well- being, social roles, online culture, and her own art-making—engaging with the enduring question of how we craft and present ourselves to others. 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. These guiding principles underpin Zittel’s performances of activities such as shopping, travelling with her partner, or running errands with her college-aged son. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Andrea Zittel (b. 1965, Escondido, CA), lives and works in the Californian Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree. Her work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions internationally, including Kunstmuseum Krefeld (2022), Miller ICA Carnegie Mellon University, Purnell Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh (2020), Kunsthall Stavanger (2018), Middelheim Museum, Antwerp (2015), Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV (2014), Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2012), Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN (2010), Schaulager Basel (2008), New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2005), Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (1999), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek (1996), and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995). Major group exhibitions include Museum für Gestaltung Zürich (2025), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2024), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2023), Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest (2022), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2021), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2020), 16th Istanbul Biennial (2019), Museum of Art and Design, New York (2015), Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2013), San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design (2010), the Whitney Biennial, New York (2004, 1995), Documenta X, Kassel, Skulptur Projekte Münster (both 1997), and La Biennale di Venezia (1993).