The Ship of Tolerance, a series of installations by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, was first launched in 2005 on a saltwater lake in the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. Photo: COURTESY ILYA AND EMILIA KABAKOV
A key figure in international art, Ilya Kabakov was born in Dnepropetrovsk (ex USSR) in 1933. In the early 1980s, he started to work on installations evoking daily life in Russia. The work took on a particular importance, echoing as it did the end of the Soviet era. Since then, Kabakov’s installations, sculptures and paintings have been exhibited throughout the world. In 2004, the Russian government paid homage to Ilya and to Emilia, his wife and co-author of his works, by organising their first ever official exhibition at the Hermitage Museum. Emilia, born in Dnepropetrovsk in 1945, graduated from Music College as a Classical pianist and studied at University Spanish literature in Moscow. She immigrated to Israel in 1973 and has been living in New York for the past 38 years. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov live in Long Island, New York and have been working together since 1989. Photo source: The Art Newspaper
