Conference paying tribute to Ilya Kabakov at the Centre Pompidou, Paris with Emilia Kabakov, Bernard Blistène, Jean-Hubert Martin, Robert Storr and Vadim Zakharov

The Centre Pompidou is organising a round-table discussion in the honour of Ilya Kabakov, who died a year ago, which coincides with the museum's exhibition dedicated to Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's work.

A key figure of the Soviet Conceptualist school, Ilya Kabakov (1933-2023) began his artistic career in the Moscow underground, at a time dominated by gestural abstraction. Drawing on both literary absurdism and the rare echoes of pop art in the USSR, Kabakov created a singular body of work which implicitly critiques totalitarian society. Language plays a crucial role in his practice, as do the notions of the character and of the author's double identity. In 1983, Kabakov began his installation practice in the explicitly romantic tradition of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Leaving his studio space in Moscow, Kabakov's installations earned him international recognition from the end of the 1980s, when he formed a duo with Emilia, who became his wife in 1992. Together, they designed numerous installations and works for the public space, all of which are deeply concerned with the human condition.

This public discussion will bring together Emilia Kabakov, artist, Bernard Blistène, curator and former director of the Musée national d'art moderne, Jean-Hubert Martin, curator and former director of the Musée national d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, Robert Storr (via video), writer, artist and art critic, director of the Yale University School of Art, and Vadim Zakharov, artist.