ILYA & EMILIA KABAKOV
From the very outset the couple’s work was distinguished by its reflection on social, cultural and political issues in the Soviet Union, on the tragic ramifications of crumbling ideologies, but also, in a more universal sense, on the human condition and the loss of moral bearings in the contemporary age
Regarded as the father of Russian Conceptualism, Ilya Kabakov has worked together with his wife Emilia since 1988. From the very outset the couple’s work was distinguished by its reflection on social, cultural and political issues in the Soviet Union, on the tragic ramifications of crumbling ideologies, but also, in a more universal sense, on the human condition and the loss of moral bearings in the contemporary age. Their work is charged with a powerful utopian ideal, seeing refuge in art and the imagination as a possible salvation from the everyday. “All this time we have worked with ideas revolving around the imagination and utopia. And we really believe that art, which occupies an important place in our culture, can change our way of thinking, dreaming, acting, reflecting. It can transform the way we live,” affirms Emilia Kabakov.
In the 1980s the couple developed an expressive form described as “total installation”. Possessing a marked narrative structure, total installation comprises elements drawn from architecture, painting, film and theatre, and concerns the potential of the artwork to entirely transform the exhibition space, considering the very notion of space as a plastic, flexible and yielding component. The installations, the sculptures and the series of paintings presented by the artistic duo in this solo show form a path that reveals unexpected worlds to viewers. Works that question the relationship between everyday reality and our gaze, pushing it into a magical space where the world we know is granted a second life nurtured by our dreams and experience. I Want to Go Back! (Reverse) is an imposing female figure with a wide skirt that opens like stage curtains, inviting us to enter.
Their work is charged with a powerful utopian ideal, seeing refuge in art and the imagination as a possible salvation from the everyday.