LINZ, Austria — The Russian artist and activist-in-exile Nadya Tolokonnikova is most well-known for the 2012 efficiency “Punk Prayer” in Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. It shocked Russian pieties and despatched her and fellow Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina to jail for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Within the West, the place artists usually are not typically thrown in jail for his or her artwork, Tolokonnikova has been swathed in a sort of glamour that misses the purpose of the very actual danger she continues to take to withstand Putin’s authoritarian regime. Tolokonnikova merges her intercourse attraction with spiritual iconography in a approach that’s deeply disturbing to Russian sensibilities. It’s value interested by why radical feminist artwork can pose such a hazard to political energy, and what these inventive methods can obtain — significantly now, in more and more unpredictable instances.
RAGE at OK Linz is Tolokonnikova’s first solo museum present so far. In work and engraved wood reliefs containing textual content written largely in medieval Cyrillic vyaz calligraphy, the stark chromatic language of crimson and black speaks on to violent political repression. By means of their repetitive, prayer-like invocations, they draw on the psychological ordeal of the artist’s two-year incarceration and the defiance required to reclaim her inventive company. One of many rooms encompasses a reconstruction of her bleak jail cell with unique letters and pictures; on the other wall, video screens play clips of the celebrated feminist collective’s performances and actions.
Set up view of the “Rage Chapel” in RAGE at OK Linz.
In a darkened room known as the “Rage Chapel,” stylized portraits of Pussy Riot members line the partitions like masked icons, with messages of rebel hovering halo-like above their heads. “Fear is coming up again help me to chase it away” is an attraction from Tolokonnikova’s track “Panic Attack,” testifying to the nervousness of a younger lady locked up in harsh circumstances and the power she managed to mobilize.
A number of the phrases in Tolokonnikova’s work are taken from her closing assertion in court docket previous to sentencing; the works additionally embrace lyrics to the track “Rage,” which she wrote following Alexey Navalny’s imprisonment. Her large “Damocles Sword,” devoted to the political opposition determine, is a four-meter-tall (∼13-foot) knife blade that hangs over guests’ heads, calling to thoughts the precarious scenario of artists and activists in Russia and overseas residing in fixed hazard of focused persecution. An adjoining room options documentation from the protest piece “Murderers,” carried out in Berlin by a bunch of balaclava-masked Pussy Riot members in outrage at Navalny’s loss of life.
Set up view of Nadya Tolokonnikova, “Prison Cell” in RAGE at OK Linz.
Tolokonnikova’s video “Putin’s Ashes” (2022) depicts the ceremonial burning of a giant portrait of Vladimir Putin. It’s a part of an set up titled “Putin’s Mausoleum,” through which small vials containing the ashes are displayed like relics; on the partitions are wood reliefs depicting the artist’s vulva and different photographs, collectively titled Darkish Matter. Just like the Pussy Riot Intercourse Dolls sequence — used intercourse toys in platform fight boots reconfigured as symbols of feminine empowerment and resistance — the items embody an aggressive feminist technique geared toward ridiculing male energy and patriarchal buildings all over the place, they usually led to her renewed arrest in Russia, this time in absentia. In mild of the latest act of vandalism in opposition to the Austrian exhibition, the message that emerges just isn’t merely the drive of resistance and resilience, however the hazard of retribution.
RAGE breaks with the Western fetishization of Tolokonnikova’s celeb to deliver collectively main our bodies of labor through which the artist interrogates her id, all that she has risked and sacrificed, and the value she has paid for her inventive and mental integrity. After admiring bravery from afar, someday, maybe prior to we predict, these of us in comparatively steady Western nations could need to struggle for the freedoms we’ve lengthy taken as a right. Perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves to what diploma we — just like the artist or, for that matter, the college college students who sacrificed a part of their training to protest the bloodbath in Gaza all through 2024 — are keen to place our personal lives on the road to talk up in opposition to oppression and injustice.
Set up view of Nadya Tolokonnikova, “Putin’s Mausoleum” in RAGE at OK Linz (photograph by Manuel Carreon Lopez, courtesy OK Linz)
Nadya Tolokkonikova, element from the sequence Darkish Matter (2024), symbolizing the poison utilized by the Russian regime to assassinate opponents.
Element of unique jail documentation in Nadya Tolokonnikova’s “Prison Cell.”
Nadya Tolokonnikova, element from “Putin’s Ashes” set up (2022) in RAGE at OK Linz (photograph by Manuel Carreon Lopez, courtesy OK Linz)
Photograph documentation of the Pussy Riot motion in Berlin following the February 2024 loss of life of Alexey Navalny, in RAGE at OK Linz.
Set up view of RAGE at OK Linz. Pictured, Nadya Tolokonnikova, “Damocles Sword” (2024)
RAGE continues at OK Linz (OK-Platz 1, Linz, Austria) by way of January 6. The exhibition was curated by Michaela Seiser and Julia Staudach.
