Latest news with #PussyRiot
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
I Caught Someone Defacing My Tesla. I Couldn't Believe What Happened After I Confronted Them.
'I think that kid just scratched your car!' my physical therapist said, looking out of his large office window that faced the parking lot. He hurried out the door as I stood against the wall, mid-exercise, with a deflated ball behind my knee. Huh? I quickly followed him outside, where we found a kid, probably about 16 or 17, standing slump-shouldered after being caught. They had a look that seems to be especially popular among many teens these days: short cropped hair, chipped black polish on nibbled nails, handcuff earrings, an oversize, faded Pussy Riot T-shirt and oversize pants. 'Did you scratch my car?' I demanded. 'I didn't scratch it!' they said. 'What did you do to my car?' I pressed. 'I didn't scratch it. I just put a sticker on it,' they replied sheepishly. We moved to the back of my Tesla, where a 'Swasticar' sticker now adorned its bumper. 'I'm sorry. I'll take it off,' they said, kneeling down. 'You know, I bought this car thinking I was doing the right thing,' I said as they picked away at the surprisingly tenacious sticker. 'I didn't know things were going to turn out this way.' When I bought my Tesla several years ago, I had just moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, from New York, where I hadn't owned a car for 20 years. I had moved to a place where drought, fire mitigation, and water restrictions are common topics of conversation — only a few months after I bought my car, nearly a million acres burned in one of the largest forest fires in the state — so buying a Tesla felt like making an environmentally responsible purchase. I had no idea Elon Musk would become the man he is today or do the things he has done — and is doing. If I had to buy a car today, I'd certainly make a different choice. 'I'm really sorry,' they said. People walking through the parking lot eyed the situation playing out behind my car: a kid earnestly trying to remove a sticker while I loomed over them with my arms crossed. Both of us felt awkward in the silence. What do I do now? I wondered. Yell at them? Threaten to call their parents — or the cops? I took a breath and relaxed my stance. 'I get that you're frustrated. I'm frustrated too,' I told them. They looked up, a bit surprised that I was offering a moment of understanding rather than further shaming them. 'I am. I'm really angry,' they said. 'What's going on?' I softly asked. I wish I could say my equanimity was due to my years of Buddhist practice or my work as a spiritual director, helping people from different faith traditions on their spiritual journeys. Both require being comfortable with silence and gentle curiosity, and sure, that may have helped. But if I'm being honest, that's way too rose-colored. I know how feeling hurt and panicked can make us do things we might not normally do. Only a couple of weeks earlier, I had done something hurtful. After I found a large, unauthorized charge on my credit card, I had an enormous and embarrassing overreaction while on a phone call with a customer service representative. I wasn't personally insulting — I acknowledged that I knew the charge wasn't his fault — but I was, let's say, loud. At one point I heard myself yelling, 'IF I DON'T GET MY MONEY BACK IMMEDIATELY, I'M GOING TO LOSE MY MIND!' I was so angry that I almost didn't hear him say the funds would be returned within a day. All the while, I was aware of a saner part of myself witnessing this colossal meltdown, and she was just shaking her head and saying, 'Oh, girrrrrrl. You're being ridiculous.' And I was, of course. Afterward, when I had calmed down, I wondered how I had reached a DEFCON 1 level of anger so quickly and acted so poorly. Yes, I felt powerless at the hands of a negligent corporation, but it was more than that. Like many of us today, I feel helpless, especially as the policies of our current administration are beginning to affect me and my community. My immigrant friends worry that they will have problems returning to their home here if they dare visit family abroad. Other friends are concerned for the health and safety of their trans children. I worry that my family's suffering in Cuba will only get worse. That my 91-year-old mother's Social Security and Medicare benefits will be cut. That my partner's kids will never be able to buy a home. That I'll never be able to retire. And so many others are facing so many other unthinkable challenges. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the sad truth behind my outburst: My feelings of powerlessness were really rooted in the Stage 4 cancer diagnosis my partner had recently received. That customer service representative had no idea (and, honestly, neither did I) how deeply I was mourning the news that my time with this beautiful man — whom I had only started building a life with and whom I had waited so long for — may very well be cut short. I have suddenly felt a complete lack of control, and I long for some way to have agency. But I don't, at least in respect to his diagnosis, and I hate it. I wondered if this teenager shares a similar feeling of powerlessness too. After all, they're coming of age at a time when, instead of seeing a bright, shiny future ahead of them, they are faced with a world that is in many respects falling apart. I can totally see how feeling like that might cause a kid to sticker cars they feel represent that doom. Until my partner's diagnosis, I had taken great comfort in the feeling of being connected to something greater than myself — call it Spirit, the Universe, Nature, God — whose laws and workings are ultimately a kind of mystery that is way beyond the limits of my understanding. I sometimes wish I believed in a personal god just so I could curse its cruelty, but my beliefs don't run that way. I can't fathom divine justice nor injustice in all this suffering. I only know there is Connection. So when I found myself standing in that parking lot listening to that young person who had just vandalized my car tell me their fears, my eyes welled up in recognition. We're both angry and frustrated and feeling powerless, and we're both craving empathy. 'Can I give you a hug?' they asked, tears in their eyes too. I said yes and I felt our bodies relaxing as we embraced. When they finally finished removing the sticker and left, I got into my car and sat quietly doing nothing for a moment. My heart genuinely went out to that kid. I obviously don't condone what they did, but I understand the anger that led them to do it. During our conversation, we talked about our frustrations, about how to work for change more effectively, about the need for more compassion and community. I was in awe of how present and thoughtful they were, and I also could see how much they were struggling to do right too. This incident, which started out so terribly, turned into the highlight of my day. Still, I'm aware that our encounter wasn't as challenging — or even potentially dangerous — as it could have been. That teen probably shares 95% of my beliefs, seemed to be acting out in a mostly harmless way, and was open to connecting with me. But what if I had come upon an adult who held radically different views from me or who lashed out when they were confronted? Would I have been able to take a breath and try to be curious about their story or their fears — not with the goal to change their mind or change mine, but simply to learn what they might be carrying? Because we all are carrying something these days. Going forward, it's my hope that instead of waiting for moments of conflict to pop up, I can be more open to simply meeting people (within or outside my blue bubble), asking them more questions, and making fewer assumptions about who they are, what they're feeling or what they're going through. I don't know if I'll always be able to rise to that aspiration, but after feeling what I felt when I drove away from that parking lot on that sun-bright morning, every part of me wants to try. Katarina Wong is an artist, writer, and spiritual director based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she lives with her partner and their blended dog family. Katarina is the author of Three Threads, a weekly Substack newsletter that uses art to explore personal creativity and spirituality as core to the human experience. You can find her on Instagram @katarinawong and on Bluesky @katarinawong. Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@ I Just Got Into Harvard. My MAGA Grandparents' 6-Word Reaction To My Acceptance Devastated Me. I Just Lost My Job Because I'm An American My J6 Neighbor Was Released From Prison By Trump. I'm Furious About What Happened The Day He Got Home.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Pussy Riot Artist Is Back in Prison (This Time, by Design)
Nadya Tolokonnikova, the founder of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot, has long experienced the threat — and reality — of government surveillance. After the group's anti-Putin, balaclava-wearing, punk-inspired performance at Moscow's main Orthodox Cathedral in 2012, she spent nearly two years in Russian prison. On her release, she was tracked by the police. Since 2021, the year when she was declared a 'foreign agent' by Russia's ministry of justice, she has lived in exile, bouncing from city to city in what she calls a state of 'geo-anonymity.' Next month, the outspoken Russian activist and artist will be subject to another kind of surveillance — in a jail of her own making. From June 5 to 14, Tolokonnikova, 35, will be spending her days in a corrugated-steel replica of a decrepit Russian prison cell, installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles. She will eat, drink and use the toilet in her 'cell,' and will perform some of her aggressive noise-music rage-screeds there. Visitors can watch her through peep holes and a security camera feed. 'It's my first durational performance,' she said, using a term for the stamina-testing genre popularized by the artist Marina Abramovic, who is a close friend. Tolokonnikova was sipping tea at a long, pink-rimmed table in the shape of a Russian Orthodox cross — her own design — in a temporary studio in Los Angeles. 'I'm used to the intensity of short outbursts of energy.' The MOCA show, 'Police State,' is in one sense a reckoning with her incarceration, during which she went on three hunger strikes and published an open letter describing 'slavery-like conditions.' She recalls how women in her penal colony were forced to work 17-hour shifts in a sewing factory at risk of injuries and even death. She has since tried TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation), anti-depressants and psychotherapy to process the experience, with mixed results. 'For me personally talk therapy didn't work — I don't love to talk about my feelings. But I'm interested in renegotiating trauma, rewriting your own personal history to bring your creativity into the mix,' she said. 'This is art therapy, basically.' At another level, the museum show is a condemnation of carceral conditions and human rights violations in her homeland and beyond. The idea came, she said, after she saw a concrete-box replica of the brutal solitary cell used to confine her friend and mentor, the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who died in prison in 2024. Tolokonnikova called this installation, created by his younger brother, Oleg, 'one of the best works of public art and political art I've seen. 'The police state isn't a distant experience for me and those I care about,' she added in her soft-spoken cadences — the message more pointed than the delivery. 'Russia has more than a thousand political prisoners, whose only fault was to say that the emperor is naked. The best people of Russia are behind bars.' Since 'Police State' is debuting during a time of high-profile detentions and deportations by the Trump administration, it is bound to be read as a critique of this government's actions as well. 'I think she's really speaking to the current political moment,' said Alex Sloane, the associate curator of MOCA, who is developing the project. 'We can't see these things — the human rights abuses, government overreach and the targeting of specific communities — as being isolated to Russia any more.' Or as Tolokonnikova quipped at the studio: 'Authoritarianism is like a sexually transmitted disease — you have it before you know it.' She went on to describe the rise of a 'tech-bro oligarchy' in the United States and rapidly shifting international alliances, which she said could impact her safety. 'Travel has become increasingly dangerous for me, mostly because I was put on this international wanted list by Russia at the start of the year, but also because of Trump becoming more friendly with Putin.' She pulled out a bag of red foam clown noses, offered me one and popped one on herself. She broke out laughing and suddenly looked like a goofy teenager, her black plaid skirt giving strong schoolgirl vibes. 'Imagine being so serious and worrying about your safety all the time. Put the clown nose on and everything is just fine,' she said, noting that she originally used the noses to 'troll' her clown-fearing husband, John Caldwell. This tension between gravity and levity, and a razor-sharp sense of humor, infuses many of her artworks. While she continues to organize some collective street actions under the Pussy Riot rubric, she has recently been showing painting and sculpture, or more accurately objects akin to them, in gallery and museum settings under her own name. Her first solo museum show, 'RAGE,' opened at OK Linz in Austria last summer. This month, she has one exhibition at Nagel Draxler gallery in Berlin, 'Wanted,' and another at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles, 'Punk's Not Dead.' And surrounding the mock prison cell at MOCA, she is installing her artworks and sculptural elements, including a gumball machine she's filling with colorful balls marked with the names of poisons, like Polonium and Novichok, which have been used on Russian dissidents. The centerpiece of 'Punk's Not Dead' is a stainless steel slide that you might imagine on a playground if its surface did not resemble a supersized cheese grater. The show also contains several of her new 'Icons' paintings, embellished with medieval Cyrillic calligraphy, enigmatic crosses and other invented symbols of devotion. 'Punk's Not Dead' began with a January residency at Honor Fraser, where Tolokonnikova gave an earsplitting performance as part of the group Pussy Riot Siberia. Her musical instruments were aluminum riot shields that she 'played' by scratching them with brass knuckles and other tools and carving them with hearts and anarchy signs. The riot shields now hang in the gallery like a vandalized series by Donald Judd. The gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch, who gave her a pop-up show in 2023, said he is not surprised that Tolokonnikova is increasingly using galleries and museums as a media platform. 'From the very beginning she's been an artist,' he said. 'When Pussy Riot did their famous performance at the Moscow cathedral, they were not a group of trained musicians but really performance artists.' Now, he added, 'you have this integration of performance, art, activism and this charismatic persona — she wraps it all together.' Still, it hasn't been easy for Tolokonnikova to find venues for her art. 'Someone told me the art world is harder to navigate than Russian jail,' she said, smiling at the thought. But so far, she said, 'having people tell me no or ghosting me is annoying' but nothing like having 'a squad of riot police invade your exhibit.' A more substantial challenge: bringing something of the live-wire intensity of street performance into the museum world. 'It's much more explosive and abrasive to perform something for 40 seconds, when you have to deliver a message before you're dragged by the feet by the police,' she acknowledged. 'But after I got out of jail it became almost impossible for me to make work in the same way because I was under police surveillance 24-7 and my phone was tapped. 'I didn't want to get killed,' she added, 'so I was pushed into the studio work.' She said she's learning from artists like Abramovic, Valie Export and Yoko Ono, who have made provocative work within safe spaces. She also speaks admiringly of the 'total installations' of the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov, who would go so far as to recreate grimy Soviet-era apartments in the name of art. Her first solo gallery show, at Deitch's gallery in 2023, featured the multipart project, 'Putin's Ashes.' Outraged by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, she invited women who shared her anger — Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian — to join her in the desert for a ritualistic burning of a portrait of the Russian president. At the end of the performance, documented in a short film, she deposited the ashes into glass vials. Deitch showed both the film and vials, which she had shrouded, using her prison-era sewing skills, in fake fur. The exhibition prompted the Russian government to file a new criminal charge against her for insulting religious believers; placement on a 'most wanted criminals' list and a warrant for her 'arrest in absentia' followed. 'My job for quite a while, the last 15 years of my activism, is to hurt Vladimir Putin as much as I humanly can,' she told MSNBC'S Lawrence O'Donnell, 'and the instrument of my war is my art. We know that he's incredibly superstitious, so he might actually be afraid.' When 'Putin's Ashes' traveled to a gallery in Santa Fe, she experimented with recreating some elements of a Russian prison cell and hung out there for a while on opening night, using a homemade shiv to carve some graffiti into a wooden table. As an introvert, albeit one with exhibitionist tendencies, she said she found it a convenient way to avoid small talk with the crowd. In her MOCA cell she will be installing some drawings made by Russian political prisoners, including Valeria Zotova, who is serving a six-year prison sentence after being accused of planning a terrorist attack. Tolokonnikova will also play a keyboard and other instruments, layered with audio tracks from actual prisons. 'The music is going to be at times very gentle and beautiful and reminiscent of my childhood,' she said, explaining that she will sing lullabies that remind her of her mother, who died last summer in Russia. At other times, 'there are going to be screams of pain, or screams of rage, screams of power.' She is rehearsing the music, but not training physically, for the project. 'It's not as strict as Marina's performance,' she said, referring to Abramovic's physically punishing 2010 durational work, 'The Artist Is Present,' at the Museum of Modern Art. 'It's not about putting physical constraints on my body — I've done that enough in an actual prison environment. Yes, I can go without food for 10 days,' she said. 'To repeat it in a museum environment to me would almost look like a gimmick. What's interesting to me is to be this living and breathing heart of the installation.'
Winnipeg Free Press
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Longing for a fifth wave of feminism, humanism, peace
Opinion Calling myself 'the tiniest cog in the wheel of misfortune' spawned by U.S. President Donald Trump and his Trumpians, I'd written an April Free Press column about the phone calls I was making to offices, agencies and agents condemning fascist White House policies and practices. I continue to do so, but having attended the April 7 Winnipeg performance given by Pussy Riot, a feminist Russian band whose original members were incarcerated by Putin for protesting his insidious regime, I reconsider my use of the term cog. Pussy Riot advises protesters are not cogs, but human beings. As a human being, then, I record with alarm that Trump intends to hold a military parade on June 14 to celebrate his 79th birthday, a date that coincides with the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. I call VoteVets in support of their opposition to that scheme, thinking a national and international day of lament more appropriate. I call the office of the mayor of Washington, D.C., asking her to refuse Trump's hoped-for triumph-of-the-will 'long-held dream.' The last time Trump imagined such a celebration in his honour, the price tag was more than US$92 million, a tag too stiff perhaps for his own party. Denied the earlier spectacle, he plots this 2025 'leader of the world' display in terms as fierce and menacing as those conceived by Putin, Stalin and Hitler. What company this president courts and keeps. I call the Republican National Party to 'commend' them on their dehumanizing accomplishments: detaining, disenfranchising, deporting and otherwise denying the rights of those who — wait for it — express different opinions, orientations, ideas, interests and histories. I note that children, unaccompanied by adults or legal representation, as young as four are set before court judges chosen to decide whether or not these children can stay in the country in which they live. I caution that this Republican list of intolerances will grow as easily to include the wide range of eugenics techniques devised, for example, within Nazi Germany. I imagine members of American Homeland Security scurrying about with calipers, measuring the circumference of human heads, the disposition of facial features, the 'quality' of bodies and brains to define who and who does not belong, who is worthy of life in this 'great' America, this 'new' world order,' this oligarchic 'master race,' and — as some have suggested — its 'Turd' Reich. I call the National Democratic Party, renewing my hope it more effectively support the millions who did not vote for Trump, the millions now reconsidering their former Trump allegiances — these combined voices raised, advocating for the human, civil and constitutional rights consistently threatened and dismantled by the White House's agenda. In the midst of celebrating protester courage, I call Democrat Al Green once more, to thank him for standing up for Medicaid even as he was evicted from Congress during Trump's joint address. I call activist Bernie Sanders, who has never flinched from his condemnation of bullies such as Trump and those who fawn, eager to protect and enlarge their part of the accursed pie Trump serves up, a pie customized by ignorance, bigotry, regression and tantrum. In the calls I make, I envision myself at any 49th-parallel border crossing being asked by a customs agent if I 'like' Trump. I respond openly with 'No,' not only aware of my rights, my interest in justice-making and truth-telling, but also aware of consequences — those who oppose Trump's dark age are humans at risk, enemies of the state, sometimes refused entry, sometimes detained, sometimes consigned to cages crafted by Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), their case, cause and/or complexion inadmissible. I wonder what impact future Days of Action in the United States and around the world will have, whether protests can dislodge the 'efficiencies' of this Republican regime, drive at least some of its ardent MAGA and buccaneer billionaire enthusiasts back into the dark corners from which they have emerged. I know the dark corners and their contents do not disappear. History teaches us that every day. But Trumpian me-first surveillance tyrannies may be held back, challenged and/or eroded by those who defend multiple points of view and identities, who consider the welfare of the planet and the galaxy in every decision they make. I — who have lived through a range of freedom movements, including four waves of feminism — define my calls as relevant to those protesting and who also believe in potential fifth waves: of feminism, humanism, environmentalism, pluralism and peace. As a human being, an old one at that, I am required to advocate for present and future generations and their right to care for and live within a world that honours the miracle of life itself, its diversity and its sanctity. arts@ Deborah Schnitzer Winnipeg writer Deborah Schnitzer explores life lessons from women in their Third Act. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘I was thrilled when they put me in solitary': Pussy Riot's Nadya on Putin, joining OnlyFans and turning her prison cell into art
Ten minutes into our interview, Nadya Tolokonnikova ducks to fetch a piece of paper from the floor and I find myself looking at something unexpected behind her. Next to a double bed, two crucifixes hang on the wall. Given the Siberia-born artist is best known for a performance piece that so offended the head of the Russian Orthodox church that he called it blasphemy, the discovery of such devotional regalia comes as a surprise. It certainly doesn't suggest 'religious hatred', which is what a Moscow court said in 2012 motivated Tolokonnikova's group Pussy Riot to perform a 'punk prayer' in the city's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, before sentencing her to two years imprisonment. Nor does it smack of someone bent on hurting the 'religious feelings of believers' – the charge under which Tolokonnikova was sentenced again two years ago, this time in absentia, and put on Russia's wanted list. Famous for performing in garishly coloured balaclavas, Pussy Riot appeared unmasked in court in 2012 – which turned the photogenic Tolokonnikova into the most globally recognisable face of a wave of protests against the then Russian PM Vladimir Putin. But looking at those bedside crosses, and at her new exhibition in Berlin, you wonder if everyone got the wrong end of the stick. Part of the German capital's gallery weekend, her solo show Wanted at Galerie Nagel Draxler doesn't just feature a replica of her former prison cell and a screening of the Putin's Ashes performance that led to her wanted status, but also Tolokonnikova's own paintings of religious icons. She uses tasteful old Slavic calligraphy techniques – while putting the icons in Pussy Riot ski masks. 'I don't have any hatred of the Orthodox church,' says the 35-year-old, who prefers her location not to be disclosed, as she speaks to me over Zoom. 'I don't like the corrupt elements, but it is a part of the heritage our country can actually be proud of.' She pauses. 'That was something very difficult to communicate to the judge, who didn't want to listen.' The Punk Prayer electrified Europe and beyond. Balaclavas appeared in Hollywood films and on the runway at New York fashion week. 'Progress is not guaranteed / I say Pussy Riot's what we need', sang American singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis. 'Pussy Riot are a reminder that revolution always begins in culture,' the Guardian pronounced. But the revolution never came. Pussy Riot's protest marked a genuine moment of weakness in Putin's system, but their boldness may have inadvertently led the world to view Russian society as more courageous and determined than was the case. 'I think it's awesome that you guys romanticised Russian society,' says Tolokonnikova, with a cheerfulness that teeters on sarcasm. 'The fact that you saw it as strong may have been a factor in it believing it actually was.' The last time she spoke to the Guardian, Tolokonnikova expressed hope that opposition leader Alexei Navalny could one day become a 'worthy successor' to Putin. But Navalny, who supported Pussy Riot's cause after initially dismissing them as 'silly girls', died in prison in February last year. 'Maybe one day we'll believe in someone as much as I believed in Navalny,' she says. 'But not now.' What, amid all these devastating turns, does she find to draw hope from? In her 2018 book Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism, Tolokonnikova wrote: 'Art is capable of giving hope and meaning to those who are desperate.' But looking at her recent artistic output, you have to squint hard to detect much light. The Berlin exhibition is inspired by her reading of the work of the US clinical psychologist and trauma specialist Peter A Levine, who suggests patients close their eyes and revisit their traumas – while trying to relate different bodily experiences to them. So Tolokonnikova chose to build a replica of the isolation cell she was transferred to after going on hunger strike in 2013, leaving the open wards where she spent most of her incarceration. 'I was thrilled when I was put in that cell,' she says. 'The Russian system of penal colonies still resembles the gulag: people put in barracks without any personal space. So we only could dream about a personal cell.' Alongside this duplicate cell, other things will bring Tolokonnikova's time there alive: her prison badge, the pay stubs for the paltry sums she received for her labour, and drawings sent to her by her young daughter. There will also be a print-out of the open letter in which she announced her hunger strike in protest at the 'slavery-like conditions'. It was smuggled out of jail by her ex-husband, the artist and activist Peter Verzilov, and led to an investigation, followed by the conviction of a member of the prison administration. It remains a work of enormous power. 'It has been a year since I arrived at Penal Colony No 14 in the Mordovian village of Parts,' she wrote. 'As the prisoner saying goes, 'Those who never did time in Mordovia never did time at all.' I started hearing about Mordovian prison colonies while I was still being held at Pre-Trial Detention Centre No 6 in Moscow. They have the highest levels of security, the longest workdays, and the most flagrant rights violation. When they send you off to Mordovia, it is as though you're headed to the scaffold.' But there is an air of cynicism, even bitterness, to some of the new works. Mounted on the gallery walls are DIY 'Molotov kits' that look like bottles of perfume. Shining in neon hues that echo Pussy Riot balaclavas, they seem to be making a provocative comment about the commodification of protest culture, something she was such a thrillingly pivotal part of. She does not hide her disillusionment. 'I'm sad,' she says. 'Ever since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started I feel … defeated. I still do what I do. I still believe in the power of art. But these days, I feel like the musician from the movie Titanic, who was playing the violin. He can't stop the ship from sinking, but he can lift the spirits of people while they are going down.' Talking of commodification, in her book Tolokonnikova insists Pussy Riot 'don't want to live in a world where everyone is for sale and nothing is for the public good'. But in 2021, she started an account on OnlyFans, the online platform where creators offer adult content to paying subscribers. She says that she also posts erotic self-portraits on her Instagram channel, and those are 'for the public good'. And the stuff on OnlyFans? 'Well, I really enjoy it. It arouses me. And it's honest work. One needs to eat and pay the bills and pay for the kids' education and that's how I do it. Political art is not a good business strategy.' She catches herself and says: 'I wouldn't want this article to be called, 'Nadya doesn't have hope any more.' If I didn't have hope any more, I wouldn't keep going, right?' She points to Mediazona, the independent news outlet she set up with Pussy Riot co-founders and the journalist Sergei Smirnov in 2014. Initially focused on Russian prison conditions, it has become one of the most-cited Russian-language media companies since the start of the Ukraine war, tracking Russian military deaths and alleging abuse of Ukrainian PoWs. Its staff recently said it was on the verge of collapse, unable to pull in enough crowdfunding revenue since Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia. 'I do still have hope,' she says. 'It's just not revolution. It's more subtle and it's more long-term.' Then she gets up to fetch one of those crucifixes and hold it to the camera. Pasted on the cross is a collage of naked women in pornographic poses, a riot of female genitalia. Suddenly the old Tolokonnikova seems not so far away. Wanted is at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin, until 6 June. On 3 May, Nadya Tolokonnikova is talking to artist Anne Imhof and curator Klaus Biesenbach at the Neue Nationalgalerie
CBC
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Russia's anti-Putin protest band Pussy Riot tours Canada
Russian activist punk band and art collective Pussy Riot are now on the Canadian leg of their North American tour, 13 years after being jailed for their outspoken opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
