As the summer season goes on in South Africa, Nel, a contemporary art gallery in Cape Town, is celebrating an important event in its 2025 schedule – a solo exhibition by Ilya Rabinovich. The project, titled “Revisiting Museutopia,” is over 20 years old, with several editions of Rabinovich’s ethnographic research on the power discourses of museum spaces already held in various parts of the world. This year, Nel is joining the list of venues where the public can get acquainted with Rabinovich’s work and embrace the nuances and findings of his in-depth research.
Revisiting Museutopia: A Lifelong Ethnographic Project
Museums are often regarded as sanctuaries of collective memory, with artifacts stored in their spaces associated with objective historical truth and reality. Ilya Rabinovich goes beyond those narratives to deconstruct and challenge them in the light of the underlying ideologies and power discourses. For the artist, a national museum is a space where some narratives are displayed, and others are disguised, thus serving the preservation of carefully curated memories and silencing counter-ideological narratives.
Given the power of photography to capture values and memories, Ilya Rabinovich’s solo exhibition presents the fruits of his ethnographic photography research in the Natural History Museum of Moldova and the Military Museum in Israel. Critical ethnographic scrutiny of the narratives they present and disguise through the lens of Rabinovich’s camera offers an exciting story of discourse manipulation and didactic narrative creation. From illustrations of prehistoric periods to wax figures of military men and the ethnographic exhibits of clothing and accessories of various peoples inhabiting the lands of Moldova and Israel in the past, the audience can capture Rabinovich’s creative inquiry into the curation of museum spaces and narratives they are meant to communicate.
About Ilya Rabinovich
Ilya Rabinovich was born in 1965 in Kisheniev, Moldova, and emigrated to Israel in 1973. After receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Photography in Jerusalem, Rabinovich started his artistic career. His creative search led him to join Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 1998-1999, resulting in his permanent relocation to the Netherlands in 2000.
In 2008, Rabinovich started his contextual and photographic research in selected Ethnography and History museums, enriching his collection of photography installations from year to year. The main interest behind this project was to decipher how museums use natural and artificial objects to shape national history. The artist is also actively involved in art documentation as a commissioned photographer.
“Revisiting Museutopia” will take place at Nel in Cape Town on February 19 – March 21, welcoming all appreciators of contemporary photographic research and museum ethnography to embrace Ilya Rabinovich’s unique visual style and approach to art.