Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: A Collective Memory

I’m Free, Four Paintings About Freedom, 2012
Oil on canvas
152.5 x 101.5 cm
Signed and dated on reverse
Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

They Are Free, Four Paintings About Freedom, 2012
Oil on canvas
152.5 x 101.5 cm
Signed and dated on reverse
Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

Free Bus, Four Paintings About Freedom, 2012
Oil on canvas
152.5 x 101.5 cm
Signed and dated on reverse
Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

We Are Free, Four Paintings About Freedom, 2012
Oil on canvas
101.5 x 152.5 cm
Signed and dated on reverse
Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

Memorial to Useless Things, 1998
Installation; a wooden mausoleum and a staircase
588 x 119 x 14 cm , 808 x 340 x 110 cm
Collection of Sharjah Art Foundation

With my respect to my Teacher Charles Rosenthal, 1972
Oil on canvas
102 x 152.5 cm
Signed and dated on reverse
Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

The Blue Carpet, 1997
Installation carpet and drawings
650x 800cm
Wool, mixed media, 130-150 copies of drawings
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation

Suprematist Painting which turned out great, 2008
Cardboard on wood
102 x 305 cm
Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

The black square is kind of a corner point, a corner step for me and everyone else. Everyone who works after suprematiscm cannot ignore it. It’s not an homage, I don’t like suprematism, but because I use a lot of quotations from the nineteenth century…in a way it is just using quotations like everything else, it is not because I love suprematism. Its among all the others. For example in the dark paintings, there are quotations from the baroque, from Cézanne.

It is like when a pianist is playing the piano he has to use all the timbres of the instrument.

…because they are useless for whom? For somebody else. They always hold memories, and everything that is useless for somebody is always useful for another person. It is a memory, its part of your life. Nothing is useless in reality. We have another memorial, Memorial to Unknown People, so that’s from the same category.
It is a very deep idea of the memory because a huge monument is a memory of the society, of history now. But if we do not have personal memories, and memorials to personal memories, there is no history of personal life.

we cant live in a Utopia because Utopia is unrealisable.

My idea was always to bring the blue carpet to the middle east, because of the atmosphere. When you go to a Mosque and you pray, you come with a goal. You know you pray to someone who has to hear you, there is a very certain destination for your talk. Here its like imitation of this…you reflect on your personal problems and personal hopes. It is something a little different in a way, more human more melancholic.

It is about two levels. Usually we look at the artwork at eye level. In this case it is on the floor, so in order to look at it you have to lie down and be on the same level as the art…you have to lower yourself down to be with it, you are still in the sky, but you see reality around you.
These drawings are surrounded by emptiness, so each empty drawing is also surrounded by emptiness. The frame in this work is more important than the artwork. In a way it is a paradise, you are in a paradise…it is a very soft light, it is very comfortable, lying on the carpet doing nothing. We have a lot of people who come who lie down on the carpet and don’t even look at the art. The look at the sky. It’s very relaxing. You are in this room surrounded by clouds, you are doing nothing, you think and you are free. Usually when people are in museums they concentrate, especially today, they have a goal. Here the art is not hung on the wall, there is nothing to see, you lie down, but the art is on your level too. And you can relax because there is nowhere to go. You are part of this work, you are part of this paradise, and you are without shoes. Without shoes, there is nowhere you can go. You have to relax. There is also a border. Every drawing has a border, a frame. But the carpet has a border too. So you are free, but you are inside the border.

There are different stages of life. For example its like a combination of personal freedom, personal memories and reflections on life, on freedom, on emptiness, on your own space in this universe, in the art world, how free you are in the art world, how free you are in life, a memorial to you as an artist, what is going to happen to the art work, because the drawings are from a very long time ago, so lying here in a state of relaxation you are looking into the drawings which have come from the past and when I was very young, so it is like a big circle. A memorial to things which no one needs, but its also part of your life, of your memories and everyone can associate themselves with these kinds of memories. So when you come to memorial to useless things and you lie on the carpet, what do you contemplate? The period when you were a young artist and you did these drawings, the period when you were a child and you read a book with children drawings in it, the period when you are old and you have all these memorials to things in your life which you don’t use anymore, which you have to throw away but you don’t have the courage to throw away because its your life, its your memories, its your past. Or with the paintings you as an artist you look back and go to art history and think that was before me, is it my homage to them? Is it something I use in my work, am I better, and I worse? They already have a place in history, will my work remain in history?….this whole exhibition is a space of contemplation – personal, social, artistic

All of these works are melancholic and not optimistic. The connection between the installation and the paintings, its quite simple, its not just the object, they have to create not only a special atmosphere but they actually create a painting, as each installation is a painting


All quotes were taken from an interview between Hoor Al Qasimi and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov conducted in November 2013 in New York.