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ILYA KABAKOV / TOTAL INSTALLATIONS

llya Kabakov is the first post-soviet artist who spoke to the West about life in the Soviet Union. Born in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk (USSR) today Kabakov is an American citizen. At the age of 12 he moved to Moscow to study graphic design at the Surikov Art School. He experienced different art styles like abstractionism, expressionism, surrealism until finding himself in romantic conceptualism. His characteristic trade mark is the “Total Installation”, where pictures, photographs, texts and sounds are mingled on preexistent scenarios.

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, “Where Is Our Place?” Installation. Venice Biennale at Querrini Stampalia Foundation.

The inspiring subject for the artist is the condo apartments, typical examples of soviet lifestyle, difficult to explain to western citizens. The real estate once belonging to rich families, seized by the Revolutionary State, was turned into living space for several families – each family in its own room – with common services: aisle, kitchen and bathroom. Think of a community of about 20 people and more forced to share one toilet! All the families having to cook lunches and dinners in the same kitchen with 4 gas cookers. The aisle becoming sort-of “ascent to Calvary” with neighbors hearing every sigh and knowing who and when comes to visit you. Obviously such conditions of life created a very intense “communication” between inhabitants. Rarely this soviet “kibbutz” lives in peace and love, thus the frequent exchange of messages of complaint, indignation and revenge threats. Living in such chaotic conditions for somebody was really hard. Many people closed in on themselves with only one desire, which Kabakov expresses very well in one of his most famous installations: “The man who flew into space from his apartment”, breaking through the ceiling to escape and avoid this sad and humiliating life.

The Toilet, 1992, Installation at Documenta IX, Kassel

The artist compares, certainly with emphasis, the life in the Soviet Union to a big common apartment – “kommunalka” – where life is impossible, but neither is it possible to live outside, since leaving is forbidden. The annotation for the exposition “The Toilet” of 2001 says: “God! How can I build and preserve the wall between me and the others, so that they, “others”, could only look out from the wall but could not jump inside”.  Daily life for Kabakov forces him to look for a mental escape. Irony and satire, which make complete sense only to those who were living in that place and in that period of time, flourished in the soviet underground of the sixties and the seventies, especially in poetry, visual art and cinema. Kabakov begins production of the Albes (Latin for white), white spaces with just one slogan in the “kommunalka” style: “ Whose kettle is this?”.

Ilya Kabakov, Red Wagon, 1991

After he adds a notice-board with lots of writings as a parody of the social art. “Kommunalka” becomes the matrix of the absurdity of the soviet society, where any type of individualism is dominated and accompanied by the threat of social pillory. In 1998 Kabakov emigrated from the USSR and begun actively to display his works at exhibitions. The interest in post-soviet art was high, since before the “Perestroika” news about soviet life wasn’t freely available. The utopist nostalgia work “The Red Wagon” on the contrary tells us how precious the memories of human life are, even if said life was difficult. The artist stated about this work: “I exported, in essence, one cube of soviet air”. In 1992 Kabakov exhibited in Venice at the Biennale and with Alfred Schnittke produced, in Holland, the first post-soviet opera: “The Idiot”. In 1997 he took part at the Whithey Museum Biennale and in Kassel in Germany. Since 1998 Ilya Kabakov has been working in partnership with his wife (his third wife) Emilia. His works are requested by prestigious institutions: the MOMA and the Solomon Guggenheim in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the MUMOK in Vienna, the Ermitage in Saint Petersburg. The latter, after receiving his works “Solitude inside the wardrobe” and “The toilet in the corner” in 2004 has decided to open a Contemporary art exposition dedicated to the end of the XX century.

Vlada Novikova

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