The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
36 South Wabash Avenue
Suite 1201
Chicago, Illinois 60603
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) welcomes Andrea Zittel as the 2013–14 William and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Professor for the upcoming academic year.
Since the early 1990s, Andrea Zittel has used the arena of her day-to-day life to develop and test prototypes for living structures and situations. The experiments are at times extreme—such as wearing a uniform for months, exploring the limitations of living space, and living without measured time. However, one of the most important goals of this work for Zittel is to illuminate how we attribute significance to chosen structures or ways of life and how arbitrary any choice of structure can be. Zittel uses her work in order to try to comprehend values such as “freedom,” “security,” “authorship,” and “expertise.” She is interested in how concrete and rational qualities are often subjective or invented. Zittel’s A–Z enterprise encompasses all aspects of daily living. Home furniture, clothing, and food all become the sites of investigation in an ongoing endeavor to better understand human nature and the social construction of needs. Andrea Zittel is based in Joshua Tree, California, where she founded A–Z West and is a co-organizer of the High Desert Test Sites and the A–Z smockshop. Zittel has had solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Basel; and the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark, among others.
Zittel will be paired with SAIC faculty members Tim Parsons, Associate Professor in Designed Objects, and Dan Price, Assistant Professor in Sculpture, for their course, Thing Lab. During her engagement as the Sick Professor, Zittel will lead several workshops with students enrolled in Thing Lab, a course highlighting SAIC’s Art/Design Nexus curricular initiative.
In addition to her professorship, Zittel wil be giving a lecture as a part of the fall 2013 Visiting Artists Program (VAP) lecture series, which will take place on Monday, September 9 at 6pm at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Rubloff Auditorium. For more information on this and other VAP lectures this fall, visit www.saic.edu/vap.
Established in 2006 by a generous gift from William and Stephanie Sick of Winnetka, the William and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC. Previous William and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Professors include Bruce Mau, Jaume Plensa, Bill Fontana, and most recently, Catherine Opie.
About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
A leader in educating artists, designers, and scholars since 1866, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) offers nationally accredited undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate programs to nearly 3,200 students from around the globe. Located in the heart of Chicago, SAIC has an educational philosophy built upon an interdisciplinary approach to art and design, giving students unparalleled opportunities to develop their creative and critical abilities, while working with renowned faculty who include many of the leading practitioners in their fields. SAIC’s resources include the Art Institute of Chicago and its new Modern Wing; numerous special collections and programming venues provide students with exceptional exhibitions, screenings, lectures, and performances. For more information, please visit www.saic.edu.
