Where Is Our Place?

This environmental installation is configured as a vertical layering of three different dimensional and temporal planes: the first two belong to a hypothetical museum space in which the spectator moves. The late nineteenth century costumes of the giant visitors and the style of the paintings that disappear beyond the ceiling suggest a historic time different to our own. At the visitor’s eye level are photographs and texts that reference the artists’ provenance in the former Soviet Union. Below the floor is a third world in miniature: the future. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov propose an unusual journey through time and space in order to induce a critical and collective reflection on the value of contemporary art and its fruition.