Art and Narrative - ilya kabakov

"The man who flew into space from his apartment"
1985-88

Ilya Kabakov to me in a very interesting artist who incorporates and is inspired by narrative when it come to his works. Kabakov uses fictional biographies that he has written previously which has been derived from personal experience and uses them as inspiration or a starting point for his works. Kabakov has also written his memoirs of his childhood. He used these and his works to tell and show the story of the birth and death of the soviet union.
The work pictured "the man who flew into space from his apartment" was a risky project for him to do and after every show he would take all the posters in case the soviets did drop in and he would get caught.

"I built the installation The Man Who Flew into Space in the corner, I glued Soviet posters from inside of it and I would take it down after each showing for fear that they would drop in, understand, and that would be 'the end of everything." ~ Ilya Kabakov.

this work tells us the story of how controlling the soviet union was/is and it talks about to escape out of the union to some kind of freedom that hopefully would be better then where he was before trapped. And then all that is left is a bed a table and a very large hole in the ceiling which fills the installation with light (this is the light source that lights the work) thus suggesting to us that he was heading to wards something much better.