Andrea Zittel has dedicated her life to experimenting with various ways to live. She continually seeks out new ways to address how to best exist from day to day, given available resources. Grappling with seemingly mundane questions such as what to wear and eat, and how to organize the clutter in her life, Zittel has made the quest for creative solutions to these problems the basis of her artwork. Beginning in 1991, she deliberately pared down her life to contain only necessities. She designed a core group of clothing that she wore every day for six months, dehydrated food to limit her choices and cooking time, and constructed a series of multifunctional furniture pieces called “Living Units” that she could adapt to fit her tiny living space in New York. Zittel’s work, while humorous in its creative approach to dealing with limited means, also addresses much larger concerns about consumerism, poverty, and the dwindling of natural resources.

Label from DECADE: Contemporary Collecting 2002–2012, August 21, 2012–January 6, 2013