Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: A powerful and imaginative pairing

Ilya Kabakov officially worked in the Soviet Union as a children’s illustrator. But he was an avant garde artist among fellow under-the-radar Moscow intellectuals. He’s now married to Emilia, who he joined in New York in the late Eighties, having escaped the USSR.

They became an artistic partnership, making Ilya’s earlier ideas fusing painting and conceptualism and his experiments with installation art soar to new levels.

From the beginning, Ilya questioned the role of an artist, turning his back on the official, leaden Socialist Realist style. Throughout, he was a storyteller, his captivating Ten Characters albums (1970-74) each adopting a different artistic voice.

The role-playing continued in the installations, including the remarkable The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment (1985), the room of a man who has catapulted himself from his humdrum existence.

This and other early environments capture Soviet communal living yet transcend it through fantasy. Memories of Soviet life dominate the Kabakovs’ collaborative work, yet it is still laced with flights of fancy.

The exhibition ends with a wooden figure on a high ladder stretching, though not quite reaching, an angel: an emblem for the imaginative journey so powerfully described in this excellent show.

Ilya Kabakov is on at Tate Modern until January 28, Tickets can be booked here