Pussy Riot
Russian Artist Collective
Moscow
Summary of Pussy Riot
Within Pussy Riot's public and digital defiance, women in bright balaclavas stand against the dour uniformed men who encapsulate the repression that exists in Russia today. First coming to global attention as a result of their Punk Prayer at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Pussy Riot became a byword for the fearless, subversive and decidedly contemporary activist artistic practice that engaged with the prejudice and corruption of Vladimir Putin's regime, and its religious and bureaucratic enablers.
Made up predominantly of young women and their allies, Pussy Riot's interventions brought attention to the repression of women, dissidents, LGBTQIA+ people and others, and positioned several of its figures to transform harsh prison sentences into public profile and pop-cultural significance.
Accomplishments
- Pussy Riot's artistic practice is designed to have real world political impact. In most cases notions of aesthetic quality are superseded by the political resonance of the intervention and/or its potential to enact change and raise awareness. This is an ethos most clearly connected to the punk subculture that inspires them, where skill or technical expertise is subordinate to the idea behind a particular work.
- The reception of Pussy Riot's artworks is often very different in the live moment of performance and the later (usually digital) presentation of them to their audience. Whilst many of their performances, protests and visual statements provoke hostility, arrest, or condemnation in the live moment, the documented, edited and broadcast versions that are then disseminated via the internet accrue national and international attention and solidarity.
- Despite the public perception of Pussy Riot as a group led by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, they were conceived of and functioned as a leaderless collective until the disbanding of the group in 2014. Today members within Russia occasionally enact interventions, but this is viewed as distinct from the media brand established by its most famous members.
- Building on this concept, several of the original founders (including Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina) argue that Pussy Riot is an identity open to use by activists and artists across the world in service of their goals of intersectional feminism. This is best encapsulated by the now famous phrase "Anyone can be Pussy Riot".
The Life of Pussy Riot
Pussy Riot are punk-influenced activists whose protests at religious, political and cultural events highlight their critique of the ruling regime in 21st Century Russia. Despite the anonymity of their multi-coloured balaclavas, several members of the group have been imprisoned, beaten and censured by Vladimir Putin's government and his supporters.
Progression of Art
Release the Cobblestones
In November 2011, Pussy Riot blasted out their stylised punk-poetry to the Russian public for the first time. Standing on scaffolding over the Moscow subway, they performed their anarchic track Release the Cobblestones, on electric guitars and vocals. Members of the group also ripped open pillows, sending feathers scattering into the air around them and onto the train tracks below. Along with their performance intervention, which echoes the Situationist movement, Pussy Riot recorded the performance and edited into a music video for the song, which they later released onto YouTube.
Pussy Riot deliberately chose November to perform their track as the anniversary of 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The political situation around them had also turned sour following what appeared to be a rigged election won by the Kremlin's United Russia Party, reinstating Putin to the position of President once again. Widespread street protests and demonstrations were staged across Russia, and Pussy Riot's angry punk protest reflected the growing frustrations of the large swathes of the Russian people.
Sampled from the Angelic Upstarts track Police Oppression, Pussy Riot's track, Release the Cobblestones calls for Russian people to protest the election by throwing cobblestones during street protests because, as they say in the song, "ballots will be used as toilet paper." In the most famous line of the song, they make reference to the uprising in Egypt that toppled President Hosni Mubarak that took place as part of the "Arab Spring" in 2011. Pussy Riot hoped to ignite a similar situation in Russia, singing "Egyptian air is healthy for your lungs/Turn red square into Tahrir." There is also an important feminist dimension to this performance, through the assertive female voices used in an oppressive context. As they argued in a public statement, "after the Arab spring Russia lacks political and sexual liberation, boldness, a feminist whip and a woman president."
The colourful balaclavas worn by Pussy Riot were inspired by the third-wave feminist artist group the Guerrilla Girls, who similarly made anonymous protests against a patriarchal system through humorous and satirical interventions in public space. But as writer Evelyn McDonnell points out, dissident artistic voices can also be traced back much further, from the 1960s and artists such as Yoko Ono to Karen Finley in the 1980s and 90s. She writes, "The torch, blazing more strongly than ever, may be passed back to where it was first lighted."
Performance
Putin Zassal
Putin Zassal, or "Putin has wet himself," was the provocative title of this performance by Pussy Riot, also released as a track in 2012. Eight members of the group gathered together and performed the anarchic song against a backdrop of smoke bombs in Russia's Red Square whilst wearing their trademark bright clothes and balaclavas. Like many of their performances this live action was also made into a YouTube video to spread their message to a wider audience.
The lyrics of the song are aimed directly at both Putin and the Orthodox church, whom they saw as deeply oppressive towards women and LGBT groups. One of their most provocative lyrics simply states that "The Orthodox religion is a hardened penis / coercing its subjects to accept conformity."
Drawing from the history of female punk and art protest groups, including the Guerrilla Girls and the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s, Pussy Riot became a powerful and outspoken voice for oppressed women in Russia, and, by extension, across the world. They argued in an interview, "We somehow developed what they did in the 1990s, although in an absolutely different context and with an exaggerated political stance." There is also a distinctly ironic humor that underpins their actions, mocking the supposed conventions of well-behaved, compliant female sexuality by turning it completely on its head through lyrics, performance style and the theatricality of their clothing. One Pussy Riot member even claimed her balaclava made her feel like a superhero. Writer Valerie Sperling argues, "their series of songs, published as video clips on the web, endorsed mass protest against the Putin regime, criticised state sponsored homophobia, and praised feminism as a possible curative for Russia's many ills."
Performance
Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away
On February 21, 2012 five members of Pussy Riot entered Moscow's Russian Orthodox Cathedral, smuggling in amps and guitars. Dropping their dark winter coats, they put on bright balaclavas and jumped over the gold security rail, standing in an area in front of the altar usually reserved for men. Once there they jumped around, screaming and shouting for less than a minute before security guards seized them. The short video clip of the public intervention was edited together with footage taken in another church by the members of the group, also adding on a recorded version of the punk song, which featured provocative lyrics calling out "Punk-Prayer - mother of God, Chase Putin away!" Other lyrics attacked the church, likening it to the KGB and criticising those who subserviently accept its doctrine without question, before asking the Virgin Mary to drive out Putin and his corrupt church affiliates.
The group posted the video online on the same day, and it quickly became a viral sensation. The internet was instrumental in amplifying their message to a wide audience, and, unlike their previous interventions, which had receded into relative obscurity, as a result of the video news of their protest reached church patriarch Kirill, who informed Putin. After a brief period in hiding, three members of Pussy Riot were found and arrested - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich. Charged without bail, for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," their three-month trial period sparked international debate and a media frenzy.
Political arguments ensued about the nature of their supposed crimes, and the unfairness of their convictions, but Pussy Riot had also opened up questions of the role the Orthodox Church played in modern Russia, as well as women and LGBT groups' severely limited rights under Putin's rule. In his public response, Putin essentially ignored the content of their message, instead staging Pussy Riot as terrorists who threatened the security of the church, rather than political activists. Two of the women, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were charged and sent to a brutal labor camp, while the third, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was given a suspended sentence as she had young children. But the international, feminist message broadcast by Pussy Riot continued to rage on around the world, serially embarrassing the Russian Government and provoking many statements of support. The legacy of the performance endures, with writer Ione Gamble arguing that, "Their fluoro balaclavas and part-art performance, part-activist ideology inspired a generation of Tumblr-raised feminists to take their activism offline." Time Magazine counted Pussy Riot among the most influential women of the century, writing, "Pussy Riot's message of defiance still inspires young women in Russia and far beyond."
Performance
Putin Will Teach you How to Love the Motherland
In a rebellious act of public dissent, five members of Pussy Riot, including Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina planned to perform their song, "Putin Will Teach You To Love the Motherland," at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi on the 18th of February. They were intercepted and arrested before the planned event could take place, however. Following their release from the police station, five women donned balaclavas and sang their song on the streets of Adler to passers-by instead.
A day later, the group reconvened to film a performance of the song near the Sochi Seaport building, but they were pounced upon by uniformed Cossacks from the Olympics security team and so badly beaten that they had to be treated in hospital. A video of the performance before the beating was posted on YouTube by other Pussy Riot members later the same day.
This happening was in response to several issues, including what Pussy Riot called "corrupt Olympic officials" and the arrest and imprisonment of the environmentalist Yevgeny Vitishko. Having just recently been released from prison in December, 3 months earlier than expected, Pussy Riot members Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina also believed their early release was to stop them from upstaging the Russian Olympic Games in February, so this performance was, in part, a means of proving that they were women who would not be easily silenced. But disrupting such a huge, international event was also a way of exposing the insidious violence and oppression behind Russia's idealised façade to as large and widespread an audience as possible. It also highlighted the complicity of an international community that, whilst recognising the repression of dissidents within Russia, still continued to reward the regime with the opportunity to host major sporting and cultural events. Curator Tamsyn Challenger, who organised the exhibition Free the Pussy! at Summerhall in Edinburgh in 2018 likens their work to various international artists who also questioned the status quo with shocking political art, including Yoko Ono and Judy Chicago. Challenger writes, "I suppose the story is one of a woman's voice. The power that is contained in that. Women need to keep striving for fearlessness in the face of global gaslighting!"
Performance
Refugees In
In 2015, Pussy Riot staged the performance Refugees In, at British graffiti artist Banksy's Dismaland, at Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset, England. Dismaland was an alternative and rather bleak take on an amusement park, which Banksy cheekily referred to as a "bemusement park." Along with a live music performance, Pussy Riot also staged a mock riot, in which police pretended to engage violently with a team of protestors. A film of the performance was edited into a separate piece of video art with the assistance of film director Ralf Schmerberg and the music producers BretonLABS and Ten Ven.
Lyrics featured in the music made reference to the European refugee crisis, with phrases including "Refugees in, Nazis out," and "F-ck the police, like we are in Greece." Criticising the European handling of the migrant crisis throughout their performance, Pussy Riot likened their own struggles against figures of authority to the ones faced by the marginalised people seeking safety, expressing great empathy for their plight. They released a public statement calling for the fairer treatment of refugees in which the group wrote that "[r]egardless of one's political views, we have a moral duty to offer refuge to people fleeing war and persecution ... this is more than a political challenge - it is a humanitarian crisis..."
All of the construction materials from Banksy's fake amusement park were pulled apart and sent to 'The Jungle', a refugee camp in Calais, to help build shelters for new migrants. Pussy Riot members continued their involvement with both Banksy and the plight of refugees attempting to enter Europe by helping construct these shelters alongside architecture students from Cambridge University. Curator Svetlana Ringold pointed out how Pussy Riot's voice lived on with even greater courage since their incarceration, arguing, "The fact that they are still expressing their opinions in a direct and even blunt way... elicits support and respect for their courage."
Performance
Policeman Enters the Game
During the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, members of Pussy Riot stormed the football pitch dressed as Russian police during a match between France and Croatia. Wearing white shirts, black ties and red striped trousers, they ran on to the field, where, in a now iconic moment from the intervention, French teen football star Kylian Mbappe high-fived one of the protestors. The activists Nika Nikulshina, Olga Pakhtusova and Pyotr Verzilov (the husband of Pussy Riot's most outspoken member, Nadya Tolokonnikova) were arrested, and sentenced to 15 days in jail for disruption of the event.
Aware that the world cup would be watched by 1.1 billion viewers, Pussy Riot's bid to grab international attention certainly worked. In an accompanying statement, Pussy Riot called their disruption of the game a protest which aligned with their demands, which include "Free political prisoners, do not put people in jail for social media "likes," and "do not fabricate criminal cases and detain people for no reason."
Like many of their previous interventions, this crashing of a national event in Russia was aimed at bursting the bubble of perfection projected by the Russian government to the wider world, raising awareness of the violence, oppression and unjust incarceration lurking beneath its exterior. In their public statement Pussy Riot also stated their support for the Ukrainian journalist and filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who was then on hunger strike in an Arctic prison camp, sentenced for a charge Amnesty International had deemed "unfair." As writer Aliide Naylor points out, "Pussy Riot storming the World Cup pitch reminded us that this happy, welcoming spectacle has a far darker side."
Performance
Biography of Pussy Riot
Early Years
Feminist punk protest group Pussy Riot formed in Moscow in 2011. Their rebellious art arose in the wake of Moscow Actionism, where artists and activists publicly rejected the oppressive and censorial politics of modern Russia through provocative and risky interventions in public space. In the early stages of the group's activity, Pussy Riot were an entirely anonymous group of around 15 young women who wore brightly coloured balaclavas to conceal their identity.
Before founding Pussy Riot, several members belonged to a much larger protest group of around 60 members of all genders known as Voina, ("war" in Russian). Primarily based in Moscow, Voina were known for creating politically engaged Street Art with an uncompromising, frequently seditionist aesthetic. They lived a life of extreme poverty, squatting illegally in accommodation and shoplifting for food, arguing that they "made the lifting of food and drink from supermarkets a form of art."
Projects staged by Voina included Mordovian Hour in 2007, a celebration of International Workers' Day in which they threw live cats over a McDonalds counter to "break up the drudgery of workers' routine day." In response to President Medvedev's proposal to raise Russia's birth rate, Voina mocked him by staging a group orgy in Moscow's State Biology Museum. They also organised a wake for the absurdist poet Dmitry Prigov in a Moscow Metro car, setting up a table serving food and vodka. Following a series of internal disputes Voina dispersed into a series of smaller groups around 2010.
One of these splinter groups was Pussy Riot. In their earliest interventions, Pussy Riot staged situationist-style, guerrilla performances, mostly combining angry punk music with lyrics that rejected Vladimir Putin's dictatorial leadership of Russia with theatrical stunts aimed at grabbing attention. One of the group's now most outspoken members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, stated: "Pussy Riot's performances can either be called dissident art or political action that engages art forms. Either way, our performances are a kind of civic activity amidst the repressions of a corporate political system that directs its power against basic human rights and civil and political liberties."
Mature Period
In 2012, Pussy Riot staged their most notorious performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which is only a few hundred meters from the Kremlin. Wearing coloured balaclavas, they vaulted into the fenced off area in front of the altar, miming along to a pre-recorded song, "Punk Prayer". Less than a minute long, their rendition was broken apart by the church's security before they could finish. Among the lyrics, they chanted "Birth-giver of God, drive away Putin!" They also attacked the Russian Orthodox Church for its support of Putin, and its conservative attitudes towards LGBT and women's rights, calling for the Virgin Mary to drive out Putin, before shouting "Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!". Despite media reports to the contrary and tabloid outrage in Russia, there was no church service taking place at the time of the performance, and the cathedral was largely empty.
Following the performance, three of the women were identified and arrested by the state police: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich. Held without bail, they first denied participation in the performance, and both Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova began a hunger strike in protest at being separated from their young children. On March 25th 2012 Amnesty International named them "prisoners of conscience" due to their harsh treatment. The length of their pre-trial imprisonment (February-July) prompted several statements of support from within Russia, including from opposition politicians and, crucially, several supporters of Putin. The Orthodox Church condemned the group throughout Russia during religious services, attempting to wield their own influence on public opinion against Pussy Riot.
Throughout their much-publicized trial, the global media transformed the young women into feminist icons, sparking a huge uprising of support from activists around the world, with many calling for the Russian government to "Free Pussy Riot." Thanks to the relentless campaigning of Tolokonnikova's husband, Pyotr Verzilov, high profile support came from world leaders including US President Barack Obama, heads of state within the European Union and actors, musicians and other celebrities including Sting, Madonna and Yoko Ono, who all called for their release. In Russia, opinions were divided, because the Russian press portrayed them as terrorists who threatened the security of the church.
Deeply eloquent throughout their trial, the young women earned an international following, but even so, they were still sent to prison, where they were forced into hard labor and spells of isolation. Both Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were sentenced to two years in a penal colony, accused of "hooliganism motivated by racial hatred," while Samutsevish was released on appeal. Although they had both asked to be sent to a Moscow prison so they could be near their families, they were sent instead to separate penal colonies that were hundreds of miles away in Mordovia and Perm Oblast. Tolokonnikova made complaints of abuse by prison staff, and again went on a hunger strike at points throughout her incarceration.
Theologian Harvey Cox has likened the plight faced by Pussy Riot to the great many religious figures from Biblical history who were punished for making their views heard, but he also compared them with "Holy Fools," writing, "Holy fools are not dismissed as crazy or criminal, but as people who, in using annoying or provocative acts, are saying something people need to hear."
Late Period
After serving twenty-one months in prison, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released in December 2013, three months before their full sentence was up. Their early release was thanks to an amnesty law that was signed by the Russian parliament. But critics of Putin claimed their early release was a political stunt, provoked by enduring public interest in the group and to prevent them from upstaging the Russian Winter Olympics in February. Alyokhina was even reported as telling the press that she would have preferred to stay in prison for another three months.
Following their release from prison, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova became increasingly focused on music, performing on stage with celebrities who supported their cause, including Madonna, as well as at popular music festivals such as Glastonbury in the UK. Their first U.S. concert was in December 2017, which they called a "subversive mix of activist art and live set." As their fame and public profile again rose, something of a schism formed between the populist wing of Pussy Riot, led by Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova, and the activist strand still operating underground and in relative obscurity in Russia. Unable to reconcile their differences, the activist group declared themselves dead in 2014, although they still staged occasional pop-up events.
Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova continued to maintain the new, more high-profile strand of Pussy Riot by producing politicised music and protest art, along with establishing a platform for supporting the rights of political prisoners. More recently, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova have mostly parted ways to focus on solo projects, including book releases and theatre appearances. Tolokonnikova's choice to develop a solo career in pop under the Pussy Riot name has attracted much criticism from her former activist friends, including artist Alexei Plutser-Sarno, who argued, "Regrettably, everything Pussy Riot is doing these days is glamorous and shocking pop," adding, "when street art goes out into the commercial market, that means its spiritual and intellectual death."
In January 2023, Tolokonnikova released a video on YouTube under the Pussy Riot name. The three-minute video, titled Putin’s Ashes, featured twelve women in lingerie burning a ten-by-ten foot portrait of Putin, performing rituals, casting spells, and stabbing knives into the ground as the lyrics of the song stated “…sharpening a knife for Putin / I will not forgive your evil / you burn burn to the ground / i’m taking you to hell.” Tolokonnikoya noted that “In order to join, women were required to experience acute hatred and resentment toward the Russian president. Most of the participants were either Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian”. The ashes of the burned portrait were then gathered into bottles and later used in other artworks to be displayed alongside the video at international venues, including the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles.
A few weeks after the video’s release, a new investigation was launched against Tolokonnikova by Russian authorities, under part one of article 148 of the Criminal Code (“violation of the right to freedom of conscience and religion”) and in March, she was placed on Russia’s Most Wanted list. According to authorities, the video and related social media posts included images “expressing clear disrespect for society” and were shared “in order to insult the religious feelings of believers”. Though she faces up to a year in prison, Tolokonnikova recently stated “I do not fear Putin. I have been imprisoned for years, my family and friends threatened, arrested, poisoned, and murdered, but I will not stop speaking the truth – that this man, and everyone who supports him and this unlawful war in Ukraine must be actively resisted.”
The Legacy of Pussy Riot
Even more than the individual artists that may have been influenced by their aesthetic or political intentions, the most enduring legacy of Pussy Riot has been the new global interest in Russian activist art, as well as in the political situation within the county. In this sense, Pussy Riot were incredibly successful, mobilising a vast army of supporters and raising awareness of the injustices that take place within Russia. Many other artists, even where some would more accurately be described as contemporaries than as influenced by the group, have benefitted from this new awareness and interest.
In direct response to the imprisonment of Pussy Riot, Russian radical Performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky stitched his lips shut, resembling a scene from American artist David Wojnarowicz's film A Fire in my Belly (1986-87). Pavlensky's raw and disturbing commentary on the Russian state's censorship on freedom of speech was directly influenced by Pussy Riot, as he explains. "I began political art in 2012 ... the authorities themselves catalysed this with their punitive action against the group Pussy Riot." He continued to perform visceral and often shocking actions within Russia in the time since, although has since moved to France, where he was granted political asylum in 2017.
Also in 2017, London's Saatchi Gallery staged the exhibition Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism. Commemorating the 100 year anniversary of Russia's October Revolution it displayed 25 years of Russian and Ukrainian protest art, placing Pussy Riot at the centre of the exhibition and examining their practice in a wider historical and contemporary context. Amongst contemporary voices in the show were Russian duo the Blue Noses, who call their work "hooligan improvisation." Like Pussy Riot, their art, which takes the form of photographs, videos and performances, parodies Russian political powers through humour and the grotesque - one of their most recent iterations shows Trump and Putin standing over Kim Jong-un, who kneels on all fours.
Russian artist Vasily Slonov, also produces political art aimed at causing provocation and has suffered under the hands of censorship. Like Pussy Riot, he saw the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi as a public masquerade hiding the harsh brutality of Russian life. For his exhibition Welcome! Sochi 2014, at the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art, he produced a series of satirical posters aimed at exposing the truth, but it was swiftly shut down by the authorities. The curator of the exhibition, Marat Guelman, was sacked.
Under the strict regime of the current Russian government, any form of opposition art can be almost impossible to make, although Siberian artist Damir Muratov has responded to the same desire for freedom as Pussy Riot with a more private language, creating his own separatist Siberian state where his own rules can lead the way. He calls his fictional, liberated state Bednotown, or "poor city," and had produced his own coat of arms, flag, postal stamp and even a currency.
But perhaps the most widespread strand of culture influenced by Pussy Riot is a resurgence in feminist punk music made by young women in a global context. English protest signer Louise Distras explains how "Pussy Riot have inspired me by showing how we absolutely have to speak out against media portrayals of women as subordinates." English feminist choir Gaggle also share the collective spirit of female power, performing hard-hitting messages about social awareness while wearing brightly coloured capes. Gaggle founder, Deborah Coughlin, describes Pussy Riot as "a living illustration of what needs to change in their country, because we can see them suffering for it."