Living & Loving #2—The Biography of Zoe Stillpass

The project is the public dissemination of one ordinary woman's extraordinary life, as told by her parents. It was distributed for FREE from Frieze Art Fair, Regent's Park, London, 15-18 October 2004.

'New York, May, 2004,

Polly,

I think I have found the subject for the next Biography. Her name is Zoe Stillpass and she is an art collector’s daughter. On the outset, being an only child, a popular and attractive honor student, the subject of numerous art commissions, traveling around the world, hers is a life of privilege dramatically different than Donald Cappy’s. Yet strangely, I get the feeling Zoe is also essentially formed by forces beyond her reach.

I wanted to suggest that you come with me to Cincinnati and meet her parents, Karen and Andy. I’ve known them for quite some time already and I know they would love to talk and have us visit. Zoe left her family home for college a year ago and is now doing an internship at the film festival in Cannes, so she won’t be there. I think it would be interesting to completely exclude her voice and let Karen and Andy speak for her, creating a phantom of parental dreams and desires, mixed with the factual creation of their daughter and the circumstances of her life.

Aleksandra’