June 21st – 10/20/24, exhibition at OK Linz
The most radical act of rebellion today is to relearn how to dream and to fight for that dream.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, artist and co-founder of the feminist collective Pussy Riot
Linz (OTS) – “The most radical act of rebellion today is to relearn how to dream and to fight for that dream.
”
Nadya Tolokonnikova, artist and co-founder of the feminist collective Pussy Riot, is being persecuted in Russia for her conceptual performances and artistic protest against the Putin regime. Your from The Guardian performance chosen as one of the most important works of art of the 21st century Punk Prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow ended with her and her colleagues being imprisoned in a camp for “hooliganism out of religious hatred.”
The OK Linz brings Nadya Tolokonnikova’s art to the museum. For the first time, her haunting works, which deal with resistance, repression and patriarchy, will be shown in Europe.
Her work includes objects as well as installation and performative works in which, among other things, she processes her traumatic experiences during her life under Putin’s regime. From a state of fear and repression, she developed a visual language that rebels against moral and political circumstances: anarchistic, radical and at the same time touching and oppressive.
RAGE” is the name of Tolokonnikova’s last video film shot in Russia, which is directed against oppression and corruption. Filming was interrupted by the police and the crew was only able to save a few shots before everyone was arrested. With the release of the 2021 video, Pussy Riot called for the immediate release of political prisoners, most notably that of Alexei Navalny, who was detained just days earlier as he returned to Russia after being treated for Novichok nerve agent poisoning in Germany.
A selection of Pussy Riot’s actions will be on display in the exhibition at OK Linz. The focus is on Tolokonnikova’s performance “Putin’s Ashes”, created in 2022. Together with twelve women from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia who share their experience of repression and aggression at the hands of the Russian president, she burned a portrait of Vladimir Putin in the Nevada desert and collected his ashes in small bottles. The video of the performance is staged in an immersive setting. Sculptures made from reworked, used sex dolls embody the Pussy Riot characters with their typical colorful balaclavas. They represent a global network of resistance, which Pussy Riot has now become.
“This art is a weapon,” says Tolokonnikova about her works, analyzing and exploring the role that her art and she as an artist can play in the context of international power structures.
Curators: Michaela Seiser / Julia Staudach
Questions & Contact:
Upper Austrian State Culture GmbH
Maria Falkinger-Hörtner
Marketing, press and public relations
maria.falkinger-hoertner@ooelkg.at
OK Linz
OK Place 1, 4020 Linz, Austria
Phone: +43 (0)732 7720-52540
Mobil: +43 (0)664 6007252540