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Robert Storr and Emilia Kabakov in Conversation

October 16, 2025

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Robert Storr and Emilia Kabakov in Conversation - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent 20th Century, New York, 2025, Casa Cipriani, photography by Leandro Justen. Courtesy of Independent.

Artist Emilia Kabakov sat down with curator Robert Storr at Independent 20th Century to discuss her decades-long career, and working with her husband Ilya, who died in 2023. Together, the Kabakovs created international projects that investigate universal themes of human nature, memory and connection. Below are highlights from the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity.

Robert Storr:
This is a conversation that Emilia and I have had over 40 years. We're going to talk about a particular kind of art that she and Ilya made that is unlike anything being made in this country. Ilya began doing installation art in Moscow in the 1960s. He began by making albums which were chronicles of the lives and characters of the people that he imagined in his world, which was very full—as were most Soviet apartments. He had to fantasize a different reality, based on his reality, but he did things with it that made it totally exceptional. Installation, as such, grew out of it. Emilia, could you say a little bit about what it's like to come into the middle of a process that's already developed to a certain extent and how you picked up on what Ilya had been doing and how you extended it?

Emilia Kabakov:
I’ll start a little bit with Ilya’s past. We were born in Ukraine. We were raised and educated in Moscow, and we live in the United States. I always say that we are international artists, born in the Soviet Union, and living in America. In Moscow, Ilya was an unofficial artist—that's not the same as a dissident. Being an unofficial artist means you work officially, but behind the scenery, you do whatever you want to do. It was a very small group of artists. They created but they couldn’t exhibit. There were no critics, there were no galleries, there was nothing—emptiness. They were surrounded by hell. And like every hell, you have to have a paradise. You can't exist without it. And they created a paradise. 

The Soviet Union fell apart, and many artists left in the late 80s. They had a fantastic reception from the West. Ilya said once that the Western art world is a paradise. And every artist and curator and journalist was telling him, “The West is not a paradise, you don't understand, we have a terrible life here, we have so many problems.” He meant art history, he didn't mean reality. There's one great quality my husband had: he didn't know reality. Not that he didn't understand it. He created out of reality a fantasy. He was afraid of reality. He didn't want to know it. He didn't want to live in it. He was forced to do it and he created this fantastic world of art, and for him it was a paradise. For him, the West was a river of culture and he was so happy to be given the possibility to swim in it. 

Ilya came to the West already as a very well-known artist. He had a gallery. But his work was based on a Soviet context and he was very much afraid that the West wouldn't understand what he was doing. So he had to create some surroundings, some atmosphere in which his work would be understandable, that people would walk in and see something, feel something, they commiserate with the Russian situation, with Russian people. And that's how the “total installation” was born. A “total installation” in reality is a three-dimensional painting. The first time I saw one, it was a revelation.

I walked in and I was surrounded by the feelings and life of some fictional character I didn't know. But at the same time, it was the same feelings that I, as a person who had lived already twenty years in the West, could commiserate with. It was an atmosphere of feelings, of expressions, of tragedy, but most of all, a desire to escape. And it was not only the desire to escape from the Soviet Union, it was the desire to escape from everything: from reality, from family, from any problem you can have, these characters were always trying to escape. Each character in the “Ten Characters” albums was an artist. Each character suddenly discovers that he has a problem. It could be anything. He can’t paint, he is afraid to be the center of attention, he wants to fly, he wants to go to the cosmos, he wants to live in a closet. And when you read you understand that you are afraid to be in the center of attention, you want to hide in the closet so no one can reach you and hound you, you are afraid of other people. You want to escape. And by the end, they disappear. And you never know, did they disappear into another dimension? Did they die? Are they still alive but they just went away? They finally escaped somewhere. We used to do performances with the albums. We would place them on a music stand and Ilya used to turn the pages and read the text in Russian. And then, I would translate to English. The viewers would listen to the text and look at the illustrations. It was very successful. 

Robert Storr and Emilia Kabakov in Conversation - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent 20th Century, New York, 2025, Casa Cipriani, photography by Leandro Justen. Courtesy of Independent.

We started working together. And in the beginning, I was very careful because originally, I'm a musician. I'm a pianist and I didn't consider myself an artist. I had no rights to consider myself an artist. I don’t paint. But eventually, I watched how he works and at some point I became brave enough—or obnoxious—and I started giving him advice. I do understand that you can’t give advice to an artist—it's dangerous in a family life—but if you're smart enough you can do it very subtly. 

And then we decided to put my name on the work as well. I didn't ask for it, but every time we had an interview with journalists, they would turn to me and say, “And what do you do while Ilya is working?” I said, “Me? I'm going shopping.” Somebody else once said, “When he came from Russia, he was so humble. And now he's wearing shoes made from crocodile skin. He became so obnoxious.” I said, “No, no, no, no, no. I would never buy him clothes like that. I buy crocodile shoes for myself, but not for him. He paints; they’re going to be destroyed.” There were a lot of funny situations. 

But one day, we were visiting Claes Oldenburg, and Coosje, his wife, started screaming at me. She said, “You betrayed all of us women. Why is your name not on the art?” I said, “Because I'm not really an artist. I don't have education. He's a professional, educated artist. I'm a professional, educated musician.” She said, “It doesn't matter. You work?” I said, “Yes.”  “You are there?” “Yes.” “You give advice?” “Sometimes.” “You participate in all of this?” “Yes.” She said, “Your name has to be there.” I said, “I don't know.” So she went and screamed at Ilya. He said, “You know what, we have to put your name.” That's how it started. That's why my name is there. 

We worked together for 35 years. It was a very productive and very good cooperation. I thought with my terrible character, I would never be able to live with somebody. But with Ilya, in a way, we fit each other. Because he never interfered in everyday life. Whatever I wanted, I could do. I could buy a car, he didn't care. He would tell me I should buy jewelry. I said, I don't need jewelry, I already have some. And we’d usually work to install, starting at eight in the morning until we finished. Sometimes it would be two o’clock at night.

The only other artist I saw working like this was Jeff Koons. He didn't leave the space until the work was done. And he didn't scream, he didn't make a scandal. But until he was satisfied with it, he didn't leave. And we are the same. People often ask, “Are you happy with the exhibition?” I tell them, “If we wouldn’t be happy, we wouldn’t open.”

By the end, since 2014, Ilya couldn't travel. I had to do the exhibitions and he was painting. I don’t know if he was happy with this situation. Yes and no. Because finally he could dedicate himself to all his fantasies and dreams, and not deal with reality at all. But I called him every day. There was a Russian collector in London when we did a retrospective at the Tate. He was a little bit drunk. He came to me and said, “Tell me, nobody can hear you. Ilya tells you how to do everything.” I said, “Absolutely, even when I go to the bathroom, he tells me what to do and how to do it.” I called him very often and the reason was not because I asked his advice. He said, “You are on your own now. You do whatever you want. I trust you.” And that was very important for me. But I wanted him to feel that he was there, he's still the artist he is, who not only paints, but does his installations. I wanted him to see that his dream was being realized. And so I continue working now. I do a lot of things all around the world. I'm very lonely doing this because I’m used to being together 24/7 for 35 years. I used to come home and he was waiting for me outside. And I would tell him everything that happened during my travel and installation. And now I come home and there is nobody there. 

Robert Storr:
I think you have a sense of ownership of these works, which comes from having worked through them conceptually and physically. How many of them have been made physically since he left and how many of them are versions of things that were done before?

Emilia Kabakov:
It's a very good question. My goal is to realize installations and projects that we never did or create something based on his work. It will always be based on his work. I don't want to invent things. For example, we just decorated the American embassy in London. It was based on his last painting, a fantastic painting, done in mosaic. When they asked me to do something, I offered this. And then I thought, I'm crazy. We never worked in mosaic. During COVID, we had some financial issues. I sold the painting [the mosaic is based on] for an enormous amount of money and I was very sorry I sold it. I have another one almost like it, a little bit different, but this was my favorite. So I said okay, I'm going to do it in mosaic. But mosaic, as you understand, could be very kitschy. We worked with a fantastic company in Canada, and I spoke with the owner, and explained that it had to be in the style of impressionism. We spent a year and a half, and it came out fantastic.

There are only a few people in the United States who really know our work. Here, everybody decided that Kabakovs are just about the “communal apartment.” Nobody knows that there are paintings, a lot of paintings, and they're not about the “communal apartment.” We did a lot of projects, public projects and permanent projects, all around the world—in China, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Korea—but not in the United States for some reason. And very few exhibitions. We have one permanent work at Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, because we were friends. Maybe it’s because we were concentrating on European museums more than American ones. Now, maybe, it’s because they think we are Russian. Politics interfere. I do think that politics are important, but culture is more important. Politics change, but culture stays. And it’s not politics that make us human, it’s culture.

Robert Storr and Emilia Kabakov in Conversation - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent 20th Century, New York, 2025, Casa Cipriani, photography by Leandro Justen. Courtesy of Independent.

Robert Storr:
I wish you could talk a little bit more about the actual making of installations. Because the way in which they're assembled in bits and pieces is one of the keys to why they work as a sort of a three-dimensional collage in some ways. And you put together things that are not born together, and the ability to put them together convincingly, things that are that disparate, and to make them look like they just had to be that way, that's a special talent. 

Emilia Kabakov:
Every artist has magic. There are different types of artists. Some work from reality, some work for political reasons, and some work from imagination. Ilya always worked from imagination, even when it was about politics. Even when it was about The Communal Kitchen, it wasn't real. He never lived in a communal apartment. It was a fantasy, always. He was always feeling the atmosphere. I also feel it, when you walk into a room or when you walk into a city, you feel what people are feeling. It is a very strange situation when you know how to present this atmosphere. 

Ilya was more artistic when he did installations. What I'm doing now, I’m probably more dramatic, more theatrical. But in a way, it attracts people more, it brings up emotions and it's very important. People may not have experienced this kind of life, may not believe it even exists, but when they are in a created space like this, without even knowing the context, they become the characters. We create a space where anybody who walks in feels that it's his space. They appropriate the space because emotions are there and because there is a story and each of us can respond to the story with his own. That's a special talent. Not every artist has it. Very few actually. I like to talk about three artists. Joseph Beuys, who created work about life and death. When you step into an installation by Beuys, you are not alive and you are not dead. You are somewhere in between. Kienholz works with life after death. And Kabakov works with the absence of character. You walk in and you become a character. He creates a life into which you step and it's your life. It is a big difference, but at the same time, it’s three presentations of life, death, and life after death. But art like this needs time to be absorbed, needs time to be understood, because good art is multi-leveled. It's not direct, it's something hidden but you discover it again and again and again. 

Robert Storr:
Do you think that yours and Ilya’s work will be understood in this country eventually?

Emilia Kabakov:
That's a difficult question. I don’t know. It's not a question for me, it's a question for art historians. I do think there's enough people who understand. There’s enough people who spend time with art, who don't buy art as investment, who don't buy art because it's fashionable, because it's art of the moment, but buy it because they want to live with it. That's a completely different category. If you buy something which you look at and you feel something, it doesn't matter how many years you have it. That’s art you want to have. Ed Ruscha said this is the difference between good art and bad art. Bad art is when you walk into the room and you say, “Wow.” You walk out of the room and you say, “So what?” Good art is when you walk into the room and you say, “So what?” And you walk out of the room and you say, “Wow.”

Robert Storr:
You're an international artist and your work has traveled internationally. It's different in every place I've seen it. And when an artist like you and Ilya can be seen in that way, in disparate places, it makes sense. I recall particularly that the artist David Hammons really liked the piece that you did in the Venice Biennale that I curated. David was able to make a leap of faith, to make sense of something that is another reality. I thought, what kind of alchemy is it that allows Hammons, who grew up around housing projects, to be able to understand communal life in a Soviet city? I think that’s what it is, that there are actually some correlations, but they are correlations that almost no one pays attention to. How does one explain where the click happens, and how it can happen, over and over again, in so many disparate places?

Emilia Kabakov:
Over the past 40 years, we met a lot of American and European artists. It was kind of a circle of friendship and understanding, and the same level of creating art. Creating art not because we want to sell it but because we were genuinely caring, involved, curious, and competitive. Are you going to do this exhibition? No. Then I also am not going to do this exhibition. Are you going to agree to this exhibition? Yes. Then I also agree to this exhibition. We met Nam June Paik at the airport. At an exhibition, we met David Hammons, who is, in my opinion, undervalued and one of the best American artists. I love his work. 

Communal Kitchen, it’s a prototype of the world today. Yes, it happened a long time ago, it happened in the Soviet Union. What exactly happened there? 

I will say something which happened to me when I first started working with Ilya. I'm in the taxi from the airport to New York and my driver is a guy from the Bronx and he asks who I am, where I’m from. We start talking and I start telling him, because at that time it was new for me, it was exciting, it was interesting and I talked about Communal Kitchen, how people live in the Soviet Union. They have the same kitchen, one room for each family and the bathroom and toilet. And he stopped the car to turn around. He looked at me and said, “Lady, don't pull my leg. Nobody lives like this.”

Now, it’s many years later. The Soviet Union fell apart. We all live in this universe. Look at the world around you. What's going on? We live in the communal kitchen. Every country fighting with another country, every country looks at the other countries as their friends or as their enemies. How can I pay back what they did to me? It’s the Communal Kitchen. 

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Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The White Chapel, 2014. Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov. 

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The White Chapel, 2014. Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov. 

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Where is Our Place?, 2002. Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov. 

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Where is Our Place?, 2002. Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov. 

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The Ship of Tolerance in Oakville, Canada, 2025. Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov. 

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The Ship of Tolerance in Oakville, Canada, 2025. Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov. 

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Will the work be understood by other artists, will the work be understood by other countries? Yes, we work all around the world and what's not to understand? I will give a few examples. The work The White Chapel, it’s all paintings. People walk in, and there are church bells. Automatically, you stop talking. It’s a monument, a church for culture and for art. There is nothing else. There is no character, it’s you and the space. But it’s a space of art.

Another work is Where is Our Place?, which was shown all around the world, but never in the United States. It was shown at the Venice Biennale. Then it was in Vienna, all over South America. Now it's going to be in Georgia and other countries. It was an installation of 10 rooms. I separated it into four rooms, I sold three, I kept one for myself. It's a big installation. But what is it about? There are three levels of existence. You go on your knees and there is a landscape. It’s Gulliver and Lilliput, you are bigger than them. We don't know what the landscape is, it's another life. Then you stand up and we see contemporary photographs. That's our time, our life. That’s what we can see and understand. And then these big figures. We only see half of them. We don't know where their other half is, maybe in another time. Looking at the paintings, Baroque paintings in a gold frame, very beautiful, but we only see part of them. The giants see the other part somewhere else. You don't have to be Russian, you don't have to be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arab, Muslim, it doesn’t matter. It’s art. It's about us. It's about humans and it's about time. 

We do work a lot with utopia. Because what is utopia? It's a dream of humanity to change your life. But if we try to build utopia on Earth, we always fail. It doesn't matter what it is. Capitalism, Socialism, Communism. We fail. Why? Because we don't take into consideration that utopia in translation means un-realizable.

Now let’s talk about The Ship of Tolerance. Twenty years ago, we started the project. We were in Siwa, Egypt. We worked with children there and when I was watching the interactions between the Arab children and Manchester boys who we had as carpenters — they were 18-19 years old — I understood that you don't need language. It doesn't matter what religion you are. You have soccer, music, and paintings—that's it—and you can communicate. That's how the world communicated in the past and maybe if we lose language, it’s going to be the same.

I decided to continue this project. We’ve done it in many, many countries. We added a concert. We bring children in and they play together. They communicate, we build the Ship, children provide materials and they make drawings. In the beginning it was about communication. Now it's their platform, about how they envision the future. What do you want for humans? What do you want for yourself? Let's start a dialogue. Understand that violence is not solving problems in any country. 

Robert Storr and Emilia Kabakov in Conversation - Features - Independent Art Fair

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The Ship of Tolerance in Zug, Switzerland, 2016, photography by Daniel Hegglin. Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov.

When we did the work in Miami, one girl said, “I don't understand why people fight. We're all the same. We have two legs, two hands. So what's wrong with us?” And she wrote this on her drawing. It's very interesting what children say. Another boy in Miami said, “Parents very often fight. We have to give them toys and then they’ll stop fighting. They will play together.” One little boy ran on the stage and he said, “People have guns and they kill each other, and if we don't take the guns away, they’ll kill everybody. There will be no people in the world.” He was four years old, he started crying, dropped the microphone, and ran away. In Venice, a girl from Ghana said, “I am black, and here, everybody looks at me differently. I think we should all intermarry so that we can all be the same color.” So they are smart, they understand things better than adults. 

Right now, our project is in Canada and it reaches around 4,000 people a day. It becomes symbolic. We have it in Uzbekistan for UNESCO. We're going to have it in Saudi Arabia next year. And so on and so on. It was in Cuba, we brought American children to Cuba, for the first time since 1957. This project works as a form of diplomacy. We have a lot of requests. We don't differentiate between religions, we don't differentiate between races. It's not what this project is about. It's about communication and it's about a future for our children. 

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Robert Storr received a B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1972 and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. He was curator and then senior curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1990 to 2002. In 2002, he was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Mr. Storr has also taught at the CUNY graduate center and the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies as well as the Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School, Harvard University, and served as Dean of Painting at the Yale School of Art from 2006 to 2016. He has been a contributing editor at Art in America since 1981 and writes frequently for Artforum, Parkett, ArtPress (Paris), Frieze (London), and Corriere della Serra (Milan). Among his many honors he has received a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Family Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maine College of Art, as well as awards from the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Agnes Gund Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000, the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and subsequently awarded him the status of Officier in the same order. From 2005 to 2007, he was visual arts director of the Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position.

Emilia Kabakov is part of Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, the duo that has worked together since 1988. Their work has been shown in such venues as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Documenta IX, at the Whitney Biennial in 1997 and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg among others. In 1993 they represented Russia at the 45th Venice Biennale with their installation The Red Pavilion. The Kabakovs have also completed many important public commissions throughout Europe and have received a number of honors and awards, including the Oscar Kokoschka Preis, Vienna, in 2002 and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, in 1995.