I Sleep in the Orchard, 1991

After graduating from art school, Ilya Kabakov first worked as a children’s book illustrator, an occupation that allowed him to earn a living, working only two or three months a year, and to spend the rest of his time working semi-clandestinely as a non-official artist in the Soviet Union. Moreover children’s book illustrations were a separate realm within Soviet visual production—less closely regulated than other forms of graphic and pictorial production and a sort of small refuge for the avant-garde, where there was room for ironic, absurd, and fantastical images, combined with playful and paradoxical texts.