Nadya Tolokonnikova, co-founder of the anarchic feminist art collective Pussy Riot, announced his first museum exhibition at the OK Linz Center for Contemporary Art, Austria. “Rage” will highlight the group’s latest protest pieces that confront patriarchal and religious repression and Vladimir Putin’s aggressive regime.
A highlight of the exhibition will be the presentation of a video work that was released shortly after the arrest of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2021. It called for his freedom and the release of all political prisoners in Russia, but the filming of the work was interrupted by the authorities and its participants were arrested for “propaganda of homosexuality”. The video gained new importance following the recent news of Navalny's death in a Russian prison.
“For most of my life, even after two years in prison, I chose to stay in Russia, despite having had many opportunities to immigrate,” said Tolokonnikova. “I tried to change Russia, to make it a country I would be proud of – peaceful, prosperous, friendly, democratic, loving.”
Instead, Tolokonnikova said she saw her “friends murdered and revolutions stifled under Putin’s boots,” something many fear after Navalny’s death. “The most radical act of rebellion today is to relearn how to dream and fight for that dream,” he added.
The OK Linz exhibition will highlight many of the activist actions led by Pussy Riot over the years. At the center is Tolokonnikova's 2022 performance, “Putin's Ashes”, in which she burned a portrait of Putin, collecting the ashes in small bottles with 12 women from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia who also suffered repression and aggression at the hands of the Russian president.
An outspoken activist, Tolokonnikova grew up in a remote Arctic town in Siberia but turned to performance art when she moved to Moscow in 2007. Four years later, she co-founded the Pussy Riot and the group began performing illicit live performances, ending up being arrested and sentenced to two years in a forced labor camp for performing the anti-Putin anthem “Punk Prayer” in a Moscow cathedral.
Reflecting on her 17 years of protest performance art for the OK Linz show, Tolokonnikova recalled a mix of “camaraderie, harassment, arrests” as well as great pain.
In addition to creating site-specific actions, Pussy Riot They also produced sculptures and installations, including self-referential sex dolls dressed in the group's signature pink balaclavas. “Pick Your Poison,” a group of colorful but eye-catching candy machines that will also be on display at the exhibition, makes sarcastic reference to Putin's penchant for poisoning his opponents.
Although Tolokonnikova has left Russia, holding museum exhibitions in the West is not without consequences. The 2022 exhibition “Putin's Ashes,” which debuted at Jeffrey Deitch's Los Angeles gallery before traveling to locations in Sante Fe and Dallas, placed her on Russia's wanted list. This time, she was accused of disrespecting Christian images by selling an NFT in which the Virgin Mary appears in the form of a vulva. The activist has been classified as a “foreign agent” by Russia since 2021.
Source: Artnet News