A terrifying trip to the USSR's dark heart – Ilya and Emilia Kabakov review

Tate Modern, London
With its harrowing echoes of repression, deprivation and murder, the Kabakovs’ art is a magnificent, moving monument to the millions crushed by communism

She was born in 1902 and died in 1987. She lived through the Russian revolution, the civil war that followed and the famine of 1921-22 that killed her father. Then there was the second world war and finally, at the end of her life, glasnost and perestroika. Her name was Bertha Urievna Solodukhina and her life was a constant struggle, just to survive. In what was supposed to be an equal society, she endured antisemitic abuse, homelessness and a string of precarious jobs as she tried to raise a son alone.

That son would preserve her memory in a unique work of art. In fact, in Ilya Kabakov’s 1990 installation Labyrinth (My Mother’s Album), he can be heard singing sad old songs from his childhood. Yet it is the voice of his mother that is preserved in the most moving way by this masterpiece of modern art. A few years before she died, Kabakov persuaded her to write a memoir. As you explore this seemingly endless installation, turning one corner then another, only to find yet another corridor, typewritten excerpts from her harrowing autobiography grip your attention.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2hMeYbT