Andrea Zittel was born in 1965 in Escondido, California.  She received a BFA in painting and sculpture (1988) from San Diego State University, and an MFA (1990) in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design.  Zittel examines the everyday through experiments in social and domestic relationships.  Using herself as a “guinea pig,” her projects have included wearing the same outfit for months, living without measured time, and constantly remodeling her home to meet changing demands.   Zittel remarks that one of the most important goals of her work is to “illuminate how we attribute significance to chosen structures or ways of life, and how arbitrary any choice of structure can be.”

In the early 1990s Zittel first established her practice in New York.  One of her most visible projects there was "A-Z East", a small row house in Brooklyn which she turned into a showroom testing grounds for her prototypes for living.  In 2008 Zittel moved back to the West Coast, and she now divides her time between A-Z East and A-Z West in Joshua Tree, California.  

Zittel is a co-organizer of the High Desert Test Sites, the A-Z smockshop, and The Group Formerly Known as Smockshop. She is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery in NYC, Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Sadie Coles HQ in London, Massimo DeCarlo in Milan and Spruth-Magers in Munich.  Her work has also been included in the Venice Bienalle, Doccumenta X, Skulture project in Munster, and both the 1995 and the 2004 Whitney Biennials.