Three years after the passing of Ilya Kabakov, Venice pays tribute to Ilya and Emilia Kabakov with Diario Veneziano, a large-scale collective work that transforms the memories, objects, and stories of Venetians into a choral portrait of the city.
Collective and personal memory is made of historical, artistic and cultural memories. We are the only species in the world to have a cultural memory
Three years after the passing of Ilya Kabakov, Venice pays tribute to one of the most important artistic couples on the international scene with Diario veneziano, a huge, large-scaled collaborative project conceived by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The result of their shared vision, the collective work hosted at Ca’ Tron from 9 May to 28 June, focuses on Venetians’ stories, memories and objects, creating a powerful collective self-portrait of the city and reaffirming the poetic and conceptual force that has made the duo key figures in global contemporary art. Talking to Emilia Kabakov a few days before the opening of the exhibition was like touching their art, lived before being realized, and above all understanding once again the luck of living in Venice. Thank you Emilia!
How did this project start?
It started longtime ago in Ghent. In 1993 Jan Hoet and Baray decided to do something involving the city’s residents. Jan Hoet knew a lot of people in Ghent because he was born there and he decided to invite four artists, including the two of us, to realize some works drawing on the city’s residents objects. So Ilya and I, we took inspiration from this idea and decided to create a museum just for common objects from Gent people. In fact this kind of objects are not usually taken into consideration by traditional museums because they have no historical or cultural values, although they have an important symbolic meaning for their owners. Each of these objects was to be accompanied by its own history. Our installation, hosted at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst within the collective exhibit Rendez-Vous, was soon overcrowded, the whole city came to visit it. The inhabitants were very intrigued not only by the objects on display but above all by the history of each of them: it was a way to establish a bond between people. Relationship between people, especially family relationship, is very important to me as we live in a very difficult time where the level of danger and hate is the highest we have experienced in the last 50, 60 years. The idea of organizing a similar exhibition in Venice today takes on a very special meaning. Venice is a very unique city not only because it’s built on water but because of its amazing cultural value: it has always been the favourite destination of a lot of poets, musicians, writers, dancers. Many of them lived here for longtime, died here and were buried here. Ilya took part in nine Biennale editions so we spent a lot of time here in Venice and we had the opportunity to work with Venice inhabitants, to talk to them, to joke with them and to know how they live here, why they live here. Some of them were born here, some moved here from different countries. There is a huge immigration right now from different parts of the world. Some of them moved here because of war in their own countries, others moved here for different reasons. But why do they come to Venice? There are many more bigger cities offering better jobs and better opportunities. Our exhibition helps us to understand exactly this: “Why do you love this city?” “What connects you to it?” “How do you see the future of the city and your own future here?”
How did they react to the creation of a work of art?
The title itself reflects the result: Diario veneziano (Venetian Diary) presented by Ilya, Emilia Kabakov and Citizens of Venice. It’s a real collective work. When I talk to the persons involved in the project I clearly tell them that even if the idea was mine, it’s them who made it possible. If you decide to join this project this means that you trust us and you are willing to tell us your personal problems or to give us your favourite object connected to your personal life (your family, your job, etc.).
The objects are all connected to the city, the project, art, life, and in someway to the memory each of them holds…
Collective and personal memory consists of historical, artistical and cultural memories. We are the only species in the world to have cultural memory. Animals have genetic memory but no cultural memory.
This project seems to be a kind of human mosaic made of heterogeneous and very simple things. What will remain of it after the exhibition?
We are hoping that the project will continue maybe in internet, maybe it will become bigger as there are a lot of Venetians living all around the world. It can become a real archive of Venice inhabitants, their memories, their lives, their city.
This reminds me a lot of the Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, both the book and the museum collect objects that are connected to a great love story. The Spanish Pavilion will collect postcards from all over the world without caring why, how and who wrote them. Here too, memories and places return as in a line shared by different artists in the way they generate images and narratives.
We are all used to travelling a lot today. We are all more or less international people, especially artists, we have lost our closeness to the community. I think this is the reason why hate and danger are rising exponentially. When you are a community you trust each other. The future of the world depends on individual communities and in general on communities all around the world.
Your work has always been linked to collective performances and has been perceived as something very important, fundamental. What kind of influence or relationship connects you with people and vice versa?
I wouldn’t say influence of people or of their work. Unconsciously we always depend on somebody else, even without realizing it. Ilya and I, we have a different way to consider each relationship. Ilya creates characters based on fear of something. Some of them are afraid of space, others are afraid to be visible, thinking that being invisible is safer. Some of them want to escape from reality, it’s always a question of escapism because Ilya himself was afraid of reality. I’m different. I learned how to work with reality, how to change it and people as well. You can change people, which doesn’t mean to manipulate them. I believe that every person, even bad people, has something good inside even if they don’t know it. When I went to Cuba and took my grand-daughter with me – she was like ten or eleven years old – I decided to take with us also some American children to perform with Cuban children for the first time since 1958. It was a scandal. You can imagine, all of Miami turned against me. One woman in particular, who had a museum, called me hysterically: “What are you doing? Are you going to talk to Castro?”, I answered :”I don’t have to talk to Castro, besides Castro is too old, he doesn’t talk anymore”. “You are going to Cuba, you are terrible. You would have talked even to Hitler and Stalin”. I said “Yes I would, because if somebody had talked to Stalin and would have convinced him to be a priest he wouldn’t have been Stalin as he would have been busy in a completely different field. If somebody had accepted Hitler in an art academy, even if he was a very bad artist, maybe he wouldn’t have been Hitler because he would have realized himself in something else. I believe that talking to people is essential to give them the opportunity to realize themselves in fields others than those they seem destined for, that’s why I do talk to people from an early age”. The art of listening to others is very important. That’s exactly what happened here in Venice. Over the past few weeks people have come to our event, each bringing an object, and some of them were particularly keen to tell me the story of their objects. Some of the stories are amazing, others are just personal stories. It’s clear that today people need attention from others, many of them feel lonely, even if they may have 15,000 friends on social media, they have no one to talk to or willing to listen to them when they really need it.
What does Venice represent for you?
Venice was my father’s dream and it’s also mine. As a kid in the Soviet Union, every Sunday my father used to put my sister and me in bed and tell us a story about us leaving the Soviet Union and going to Venice visiting all the museums and having a ride in a gondola. So in my mind I knew that one day I would leave the Soviet Union and I would go to Venice where I would enjoy a gondola ride. It was my dream that has come true. It came true for my parents as well in fact when they left the Soviet Union they first came to Venice.
So Venice in a way means freedom to you?
It’s more linked to the idea of inclusivity because here I feel, I wouldn’t say at home, but certainly very welcomed.
