Born in 1980 in Sydney, Australia.
Tessa Zettel works collaboratively between disciplines as an artist, writer and researcher to imagine and enact other ways of living. Her participatory projects respond to the contexts in which they occur, using a kind of fabulist archaeology to make visible contested histories & possible futures. This involves bringing speculative forms of mapping, storytelling, writing, publishing, drawing, object-making, performance and exchange to overlooked or devalued cultural practices and knowledge. In recent years, Tessa has lived between international artist residencies in France, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Mexico and China. She is co-founder of the T. Rudzinskaite Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society (a ficto-critical performance/ publishing project with Sumugan Sivanesan), micro-publishing platform Cloudship Press and experimental research collective Weathering (with Astrida Neimanis & Jennifer Hamilton). She is also a co-director at Sydney artist-run space & library Frontyard Projects, a member of international public art/ architecture group Collective Disaster, and has taught in Interdisciplinary Design at the University of Technology Sydney, the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney.
EDUCATION
2005 Bachelor of Design (First Class Honours) – College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales
SOLO/ COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITION PROJECTS
2020, 2088 Lichen FestRevival (with Sumugan Sivanesan), Lichen Fest #2, online/ Mustarinda, Kainuu (Finland)
2019, The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge: An Incomplete Inventory of Extinctions in the People’s Republic of China, Black Sesame Space/ Institute for Provocation, Beijing
2018, 2086 T. Rudzinskaite Memorial Amateur Lichenologist’s Society Annual Field Trip & Picnic (with Sumugan Sivanesan), 8th Interformat Symposium: On Rites and Terrabytes, Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Nida (Lithuania)
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021, The Things We Made Next, Melbourne Design Week, NGV/various locations, Melbourne
2020, sea_youhere #20, Virtual Vitrine, SEA Foundation, Tilburg (the Netherlands)