A Soviet Engineer of Eternal Life

Ilya Kabakov, Texts / Library of Moscow Conceptualism (German Titov, 2010), 188.

From the exhibition catalog to “Ilya & Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will be Taken Into the Future,” Tate Modern, London, October 18, 2017–January 28, 2018 →.

Ilya Kabakov interviewed by Boris Groys, in Boris Groys: Dialogues (German Titov, 2010), 98.

Ilya Kabakov, “On Total Installation,” in Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture (Berghahn Books, 1999), 24.

Here Kabakov ironically uses the slang word “kartinshik” (literally a person who makes “kartini”—“paintings” or “pictures”), which in the context of the Soviet underground carries the negative connotation of a commercial artist.