Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are Russian-born American artists who have been collaborating since 1989. Their paintings, texts, and installations imaginatively address the downfall of utopian society, by exploring Soviet-era culture and figures such as El Lissitzky. “Fear is the reason for making art,” Ilya Kabakov has remarked. “It is a means to freedom.” Born on September 30, 1933 in Dnipropetrovsk, Soviet Union (currently Ukraine), Ilya Kabakov spent his youth in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he attended the Leningrad Academy of Art which had been relocated during World War II. In 1945, the artist moved to Moscow where he studied graphic design and book illustration. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he worked as an illustrator...