In the video Clutch (2010), a close view of the artist's hands interacting with those of her child is a poignant metaphor, and an example of how much emotional information can be transmitted through physical gesture. About the work, Zittel says, "In the case of the video titled Clutch, my hands are shown touching the hands of my son Emmett. The gestures range from forms of control to nurture to playful teasing, as facets of our relationship are played out."
Zittel's work has been exhibited internationally and has been included in the 1993 Venice Biennale, Documenta X in Kassel and Skulptur Projekte Münster in 1997, and the 1995 and 2004 Whitney Biennial, among many others. The artist is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Sadie Coles HQ in London, and Spruth-Magers in Munich. She is the recipient of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award, and the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.
Andrea Zittel, Clutch, 2010. Image courtesy Sprüth Magers.
b. 1965
Andrea Zittel is an American artist based in Joshua Tree, CA whose practice encompasses spaces, objects and modes of living in an ongoing investigation that explores the questions “How to live?” and “What gives life meaning?” Answering these core questions has entailed exploring complex relationships between our need for freedom, security, autonomy, authority, and control—observing how structure and limitations often have the capacity to generate feelings of freedom beyond open-ended choices.
