Ilya & Emilia Kabakov: Installation & Theater

The Russian artist Ilya Kabakov is widely known for his large-scale installations that combine narrative, architecture, and social commentary.

This exhibition catalogue presents a lesser-known aspect of his practice by focusing on his work for the theatre and the stage.The publication invites the reader into Kabakov’s world of theatrical imagination, bringing together rarely shown stage designs, accompanied by sketches, drawings, and the artist’s own commentaries. After emigrating to the West in 1987, Kabakov increasingly turned toward theatre as a field in which he could merge his background as a children’s book illustrator with his long-standing interest in installation and spatial storytelling.

While early stage projects often carried explicit political references, his theatrical works gradually became more playful, poetic, and dreamlike. Installation & Theatre documents the full range of Kabakov’s engagement with the stage—from sculptural circus-like constructions to unrealized utopian proposals, including visionary projects conceived for institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The catalogue reveals theatre as a crucial extension of Kabakov’s artistic thinking, where narrative, space, and imagination converge in a uniquely immersive form.