Opening reception of Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot's Russia at The Polygon Gallery. Photo by Alison Boulier.

Opening reception of Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot's Russia at The Polygon Gallery. Photo by Alison Boulier.

Opening reception of Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot's Russia at The Polygon Gallery. Photo by Alison Boulier.

Pussy Riot, From the action ‘Putin peed his pants,’ 2012, inkjet print, 84.07 x 118.87 cm. Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Denis Bochkarev

Pussy Riot, From the action ‘Death to prison, freedom to protest,’ 2011, inkjet print, 29.7 x 42 cm. Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Denis Sinyakov

Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina arrested after the action ‘Paper Planes,’ 2018, inkjet print, 10.41 x 14.73 cm. Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Martin_camera.

Opening reception of Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot's Russia at The Polygon Gallery. Photo by Alison Boulier.

Opening reception of Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot's Russia at The Polygon Gallery. Photo by Alison Boulier.

Opening reception of Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot's Russia at The Polygon Gallery. Photo by Alison Boulier.

Pussy Riot, From the action ‘Putin peed his pants,’ 2012, inkjet print, 84.07 x 118.87 cm. Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Denis Bochkarev

Pussy Riot, From the action ‘Death to prison, freedom to protest,’ 2011, inkjet print, 29.7 x 42 cm. Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Denis Sinyakov

Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina arrested after the action ‘Paper Planes,’ 2018, inkjet print, 10.41 x 14.73 cm. Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Martin_camera.

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Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia

Opening Reception and Artists’ Talk:
Thursday, March 21, 6 – 9 pm
More information here

The exhibition Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia originated at Kling & Bang (Iceland) and has toured to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark) and the Museum d’art contemporain de Montréal.

On February 21, 2012, members of the then newly formed feminist punk collective Pussy Riot staged a guerrilla action inside the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Clad in their signature balaclavas, they stormed the altar to perform “Punk Prayer,” in a blistering response to the upcoming re-election of Vladimir Putin, his collusion with the Church, and the progressive drift of Russia into authoritarianism under his rule: “Congregations genuflect/ Black robes brag gilt epaulettes/ Freedom’s phantom’s gone to heaven/ Gay Pride’s chained and in detention/ KGB’s chief saint descends/ To guide the punks to prison vans.”

Three of the collective’s members – Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova, Maria (Masha) Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich – were subsequently arrested, charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a penal colony. In the eyes of Putin’s spiritual advisor Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, the punishment was fitting: “…all of this is more than hooliganism, more than just banal anti-clerical acts, as people are wont to call it. This is a new reality of our life: ‘velvet terrorism.’”

“Punk Prayer” was one of the first of a series of over fifty disruptive, but peaceful, guerrilla actions that Pussy Riot embarked on over the next decade. They scaled Moscow trolley and subway cars to scatter feathers that warned “ballots will be used as toilet paper” in the 2012 elections that reinstated Putin. They decried anti-LGBTQ laws, “congratulating” Putin on his sixty-eighth birthday by replacing the Russian flag with a rainbow flag on major government buildings, including tellhe Russian Supreme Court, the Ministry of Culture, and the Basmanny police station. They protested the incarceration of prisoners of conscience by running onto the 2018 World Cup Final soccer pitch dressed as police officers and by redecorating a Christmas tree in front of the infamous Lubyanka Building, headquarters of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) with ornaments featuring the likenesses of political prisoners incarcerated inside. And when the FSB banned Telegram, the encrypted communication app favoured by the group, they stood in front of the Lubyanka and threw paper airplanes – Telegram’s logo – at it.

As humorous and purposely ineffectual as these protests are – or, in the words of Alyokhina, “desperate, sudden, and joyous” – they elicited an increasingly hostile, violent, and often hysterical response from the Russian police and state apparatus. Members of Pussy Riot were put under house arrest, incarcerated, and tortured. The four who ran onto the World Cup pitch were imprisoned, and one of them, Pyotr Verzilov, was subsequently poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.

Alyokhina herself would endure six more prison terms as well as one year of “restricted freedom” under house arrest after participating in a demonstration to protest the harsh punishments of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most formidable political opponent in Russia. On April 26, 2022, Alyokhina appeared on the Russian Interior Ministry’s Most Wanted List when she removed her electronic bracelet to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Almost immediately, she faced new charges and the near certainty of another indefinite term in a penal colony. Before it could be meted out, Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Riot member Lucy Shtein engineered an ingenious escape from the country disguised as food delivery couriers.

Velvet Terrorism sets out to chronicle the history of Pussy Riot’s actions from the group’s formation in 2011 to the present day. Curated by Alyokhina in collaboration with Icelandic artists Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and Ragnar Kjartansson, the exhibition, which was first staged at the artist-run space Kling & Bang in Reykjavik, is a cacophonous showcase of “…the performances in context – prelude, action, reaction – … shed(ding) light on the oppression and the growing brutality of the dictatorship in Russia for the last ten years.”1 The exhibition invites the audience to explore a labyrinth of the group’s guerrilla actions and the serious consequences of executing them, illustrating an ever-inventive fight for freedom when one’s life is increasingly at stake.

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