Most recently, along with the other members of Pussy Riot, she conducted a highly subversive work of performance art where a portrait of President Putin was burned and the ashes from the fire collected in small vials. Now this piece, titled Putin’s Ashes, will be incorporated into Pussy Riot’s debut fine art exhibition in Santa Fe, at the CONTAINER hybrid-museum outpost of the world-renowned Turner Carroll Gallery.
office caught up with Tolokonnikova ahead of Pussy Riot’s fine art debut this week.
Relics and rituals seem to take center stage in your artwork. Can you tell me the role that these practices and artifacts have in the message of your art?
There’s a school of thought that says that the performance artist is the new Shaman. Our roles might be very similar - we work with intentionality, manifesting, and summoning the power of a collective of people coming together and desiring something. The oldest form of song is prayer, and Pussy Riot’s most known art piece is a punk prayer: the one we performed in the cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow in 2012. We asked our Goddess to help us to get rid of Putin. We knew that if he’s not out of power, terrible things will happen to our beloved country. Today, in 2023, more people than ever join Pussy Riot in our punk prayer, including the International Criminal Court in Hague.
How has this inflective spirituality influenced the performance seen in Putin’s Ashes?
I work a lot with desire, intention, dreaming and making dreams come true, utopian thinking, political imagination combined with a will and persistence to fulfill what you have imagined. I also try to understand all the forces that stop you from fulfilling your dreams and desires - fear, apathy, depression, dictatorships, physical and mental injuries, imprisonments, PTSD, lack of confidence, censorship - and especially self-censorship. As Dostoevsky put it, “Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart.” Each one of us is a sum of these vectors pulling us in opposite directions, and ultimately it’s up to you to decide to which side you will surrender. I choose to overcome my fear. I choose to remain naive and idealistic and keep fighting for what’s right. I refuse to become cynical. I believe that even one person can change the world. I believe in the power of collective action. That’s what we tried to achieve with Putin’s Ashes.