The Critical Potential of “Total Installations” – The Logic of Ilya Kabakov
The Critical Potential of “Total Installations” – The Logic of Ilya Kabakov

Summary/Abstract: The critical potential of “total installations”— the logic of Ilya KabakovThis paper focuses on the analysis of the installation Ten Characters by Ilya Kabakov, as this artwork is considered as a crucial instance in interpreting Soviet narratives and figures as a metaphor for life in the Soviet Union. The paper shows that Kabakov draws attention to the consequences of the typical housing structure invented during Socialist regime known as the kommunalka, or communal apartment. In this artwork, he comments on the forms of horizontal supervision that function not only in the communal apartment, but in the wider sphere of Soviet society, and uses the local mentality emphasising the role of social reality.In this respect, the critical potential of this artwork is monitored simultaneously by its challenge to socialist realism on the political level, and its fetishism of neo-avant-garde art on the aesthetic level.

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