Curator Chiara Bertola and Fondazione Querini Stampalia celebrate Ilya Kabakov, one year after his death. A maestro of conceptual art and a genius experimenter of the poetry and expressive potential of materials.
Kabakov is known as the most important Soviet-born, naturalized American artist of the twentieth century. Ilya’s other half, in life and in art, Emilia gave her all both in the indissoluble union of her joint artistic journey and in making it possible to celebrate her late husband. “All this time – once said the Kabakovs – we have been working with ideas, imagination, and utopia. We do believe that art, which enjoys such a special place in our culture, may change the way we think, dream, act, and reflect. It can change the way we live.” Exhibition Between Heaven and Earth. A tribute to Ilya Kabakov offers a poetic journey to some historical installations by the Kabakovs, shown in an ideal conversation with the ancient halls and the art collection at the Museum of Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Ilya and Emilia reveal fractures, invent connections, show something that we were almost losing, or risked never being seen. The exhibition will close on July 14, but the strength of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s art is indelible in the realm where beauty makes things immortal. Thank you, Emilia, for the privilege of talking with you.
An homage that is also a newly found discovery of an essential modern artist and a creative partnership – Ilya + Emilia – that has no equals. “Our work is our life”, you stated. What meaning does memory have for you, and how does this exhibition make the concept of artistic synthesis universal?
Ilya and I created a unique partnership. We were partners in everything: art creation, writing, everyday decisions, and both artistic and common issues. When Ilya came to the West, he said that the western art world is ‘a paradise’ and was immediately berated by many journalists for saying that. They forgot a few very important details of his life: he came from a totalitarian society, where the common citizens were treated like nothing, where people had no basic rights for anything. There, every person was a property of the State and had no rights for any individual thinking, writing, saying anything. He never had an exhibition, he couldn’t exhibit the art he was making in his studio and could only show to a few trusted friends. Of course, when he suddenly was given this enormous possibility to create, to show, to say what he wanted, he felt that he entered dreamland. I had been living in the West for fourteen years by then, and I knew how difficult life was for many artists. The difference was: they had a freedom to do, to write, to paint, and to say whatever they wanted. When you are born in a free world, it takes personal experience of life in one which is a totalitarian dictatorship, to understand the person, who suddenly is given something he was deprived of all his life. Ilya and I had this magic life for 35 years. And that was the life both of us wanted to live. It was not about money, or better clothes, cars, or homes. It was about being able to dream and then going out and make our dreams to become a reality. We were lucky to see many of our projects realized, and we were together. Suddenly he is not here. It’s scary. It’s hard to believe and impossible to accept. And I was trying to keep him with me by creating exhibitions. Bringing the past into the present. Bringing his soul with me through our work.
Between Heaven and Earth. A tribute to Ilya Kabakov converses with the Fondazione Querini Stampalia Museum as it traces the guidelines for your art. How do these installations make your common art DNA emblematic?
It is very difficult to create a dialogue between old masters and contemporary art. You cannot just ‘intervene.’ They own the space. It’s their territory, their art lives there. But you can create a very specific ‘interest’ a kind of ‘curious relationship,’ where you show respect for the space itself, its beauty, its atmosphere, the Soul of the Place. And this works. Or I hope it did work in this show. Chiara Bertola and I were trying to place the works so they wouldn’t clash with surrounding, that the viewer would see the harmony, the peaceful coexistence between the past and the present. After all, the DNA of contemporary art has its roots in the art of the past. It didn’t grow in the Cosmic Emptiness. It developed, grew, and matured among the fantastic cultural field, created by the artists, architects, furniture makers, and art patrons of the past.
Many installations make the relationship with the divine, with Otherness, apparent. What is your relationship with religion, the sacred, and spirituality?
It’s a difficult question. How many people today will admit that they do believe in God and in angels? Not many. We are too practical, too much oriented on everyday situations, problems, pleasures. But Ilya and I strongly believe in the importance of culture. In a way, Culture, the museums of today, took upon themselves the role which the Church was playing for many centuries: to elevate people to higher level of existence. To give them this possibility to understand that there are more important things and goals in our lives. Religion gives us the moral rules how to live and survive as a society. It feeds our souls. Culture, art, music, and poetry show us the beauty of life, give us the possibility to express our feelings and to use our creativity, to use our six senses. This is what makes us and keeps us human. And I do also believe in fairies. And all those beautiful fairytales.
Modern Complexity is dominated by parameters that influenced and conditioned our concept of time, which obviously emerges from many of the installations: lived time, perceived time, represented time. What measure of time does your art have? What is your idea of immortality in art?
This is a very good question. I don’t think it can be answered so easily. What actually is immortality? Let’s look at the past: the art, books, and music which survived the test of time are immortal. And so, obviously, are the authors of all those things. I think the main criterion always was and always will be: the complexity of the good art, books, and music. It could look or sound deceptively simple, but only when you leave the museum or concert hall or theatre do you realize that you have millions of questions. It stays with you. It is disturbing you in a good way, makes you think. And that’s what I would call immortality. God created the World, it was the first total installation. People created Churches and that was the next total installation. People come there to think about good and evil, about their lives, to ask for help, for forgiveness for… miracle. I do think that there are special places on Earth, where channels connected to a Higher Power are located, and architects who choose the places for building all those churches and monasteries, for any religions, somehow did know or feel them. Total Installation is elevating an art space to highest level of human consciousness. But that’s a much bigger theme.
What relationship is there between Ilya/Emilia and Venice? How important has Venice been for your art?
Venice is a magical city, on every level. Something about it always stirs your creativity, your connection with the past and present is very fragile here, but it’s probably one of the rare places on Earth where the air is full of mystery, where you walk at night and really are expecting some figure from the past to pass by. The past didn’t die here. It’s still alive. Did anybody ever think why so many artists, musicians, poets, and writers come to Venice to live and…to die? Coming back to your question about immortality. Maybe, Venice is the place where the souls keep living and even creating? And talented people somehow feel this pull of eternity here. Ilya and I did work and live in Venice for many months during our big projects for Querini Stampalia and for the Venice Biennale. And some of those months were when Venice was empty of tourists. I can attest to incredible magic of this city. And some of our best projects, like Where Is Our Place? (an eternal question for anyone) were done here, in Venice. At the Querini Stampalia.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Art Foundation keeps your art and promotes and sponsors other artists, educational events, and exhibitions to foster cultural exchange and understanding. What is, in your opinion, the role and the strength of art for a more aware present and for the future of our society?
Another question which is very difficult to answer in our time. I strongly believe that Culture is what makes us different, what makes us human, which gives us the right to call ourselves human. If we destroy the cultural past of humans, we will destroy ourselves. I do believe that any destruction or even, presumably, ‘harmless’ desecration or destruction of cultural artifacts – sculptures, paintings, historical objects – has to be punished by law as destruction of World Cultural Heritage, Universal Property. There are no “good causes” or reasons to validate such things. Cultural dialogues in many cases can help to keep human relationships intact. Can art change the world? No, I don’t believe it can. But it definitely can change people, their attitude, and those people in many cases can change the world. And create a better future for the next generation of artists.
