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World Renowned Russian-American Artist Emilia Kabakov on It’s A Question of Balance with Ruth Copland

Regularly named among the top 10 living artists in the world Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are the ‘two most consequential artists to emerge from Russia since the 1920s’ (Robert Storr). They have worked together in the USA, where they live, since the late 1980s and are known for their complex large-scale projects and immersive ‘total’ installations. To date, together they have created nearly 200 of these total installations, which invite the viewer to become an active part of the work considering the meaning of utopia, the place of the artist, power, hope, fear, escapism, fantasy, and much more. 

Ruth Copland will be talking to Emilia about what Utopia embodies for the Kabakovs, how their early life in the Soviet Union factors into their work, what painting offers different from installations, whether art should be life-affirming, if there is a spiritual aspect to their work, their recurring use of the metaphor of flight, how much the context of an art work matters, and the Kabakovs latest exhibition Not Everyone Will Be Taken Into the Future, which explores their pioneering place in the international story of conceptual art. The exhibition is currently at the State Hermitage, St Petersburg, having previously been at Tate Modern, London.

To listen to interview click here Emilia Kabakov Pt 2 | It’s A Question of Balance (broadcast 23 June).

This is the second in a two-part series of interviews with Emilia Kabakov. If you’d like to hear the other part click here Part 1 Emilia Kabakov | It’s A Question of Balance

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