Nadya Tolokonnikova is returning to prison—but this time, it’s by choice. The Pussy Riot co-founder will confine herself to a steel replica of a Russian jail cell for Police State, a durational performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Running from June 5th to 14th, the work is part of the museum’s Wonmi WARHOUSE Program. The work will be viewable through surveillance camera footage and peepholes in the museum.
The installation is drawn from Tolokonnikova’s experience in Russia’s penal system. She served two years in prison following Pussy Riot’s 2012 anti-Putin performance Punk Prayer. Punk Prayer. The Russian artist performed the piece outside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The Russian government charged Tolokonnikova, as well as Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
“The police state isn’t a distant experience for me and those I care about,” Tolokonnikova told the New York Times. “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.”
Pussy Riot’s confrontational style has since become a hallmark of feminist and anti-authoritarian art around the world. While in prison, Tolokonnikova published an open letter in the Guardian that outlined the brutality of the penal colony. In Police State, she reclaims the site of confinement as a space of resistance and creative expression, coinciding with a moment when mass detentions and deportations are happening throughout the United States.
Tolokonnikova’s first solo gallery show at Jeffrey Deitch in 2023 featured Putin’s Ashes, which was initiated in 2022 when Pussy Riot burned a portrait of the Russian president. The work prompted a new criminal case in Russia against the artist, resulting in her placement on the country’s “most wanted” list. Tolokonnikova currently has two solo exhibitions on view: “Wanted” at Galerie Nagel Draxler in Berlin and “Punk’s Not Dead Part II” at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles.
