Pussy Riot founder set for exhibit in Santa Fe after LA show interrupted by 'military activity'

Life imitated art this week as Pussy Riot creator Nadya Tolokonnikova’s 10-day performance art project, “Police State,” was interrupted by military activity unfolding in downtown Los Angeles.

LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) shuttered the doors of its Geffen Contemporary building last weekend with Tolokonnikova inside. Then, on Wednesday, the museum announced that her performance would be paused and rescheduled to an unspecified later date “out of concern for the safety of staff and visitors” amid “evolving conditions” and “military activity” in the area.

The artist — who will be at Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe on June 28 for the opening of her latest exhibition “Wasn’t Invited so I Broke the Door,” depicting scenes of repression and resistance — spoke to the Journal the following day.

“The piece started on June 5th, and in a couple of days the raids started happening in Los Angeles, the ICE raids — absolutely gut-wrenching and terrifying — families being separated, pregnant women being arrested — and people decided to step up, and made a little demonstration,” Tolokonnikova said. “Then, Trump decided to bring the National Guard to Los Angeles, which prompted a bigger response from Los Angeles community.”

President Donald Trump deployed nearly 2,000 National Guard troops to downtown LA against the wishes of state and local government officials. After an additional 700 Marines were deployed to the area on Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “Democracy is under assault.”

“Effectively, in two days after my performance started, the ‘Police State’ performance broke the fourth wall and spilled into the city,” Tolokonnikova said. “So, today, I can say that the National Guard is performing ‘Police State’ instead of me.”

“Police State,” which involved the artist living and working inside a simulated prison cell, was partly inspired by the nearly two years Tolokonnikova spent in a Russian prison following her 2012 Pussy Riot performance, “Punk Prayer.”

“I came to the idea of creating this installation called ‘Police State’ because the police state is not something in my distant past. It’s something that is happening here and now,” she said. “When I was first inventing the idea of the installation and performance, I was thinking mostly about Russia, not about the United States. But it turned out to be true also about the United States.”

Tolokonnikova said “Police State” is a tribute to political dissidents, including her friend Alexei Navalny, who was assassinated last year.

“This exhibition, in part, is my personal note to Alexei that his work is continuing,” she said. “We lost a lot of hope as progressive Russians with (the killing of) Alexei Navalny, but we gained responsibility.”

Tolokonnikova said it is up to each individual now to find “organic ways” to “protect democracy.”

“If you think about long-term activism, you must do it in a way that is organic to you,” she said. “If you’ve been a painter, think, ‘How can you use that?’ If you’re a gardener, think, ‘How can you use that?’ Maybe you’ll grow tomatoes and give them to someone who needs them.”

Her installation’s mix of hyperrealistic details and surreal touches recalls the work of pioneering Russian installation artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, while the artist credits Marina Abramovic with inspiring the durational element of the performance.

“This idea was born partly out of my conversations with Marina Abramovic,” Tolokonnikova said. “If you are in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in front of the altar (where she performed ‘Punk Prayer’), 40 seconds is enough. But if you are in the white walls of a museum, it takes more than that.”

By extending a performance over multiple days, Tolokonnikova said she hoped to “maintain the (same) intensity” of her guerrilla actions within a more conventional art context.

“I must say, in collaboration with Donald Trump and the National Guard, that intensity was reached,” Tolokonnikova said. “It was not planned, obviously — how could I ever plan it? — but a lot of artists like to talk about ‘the destruction of the fourth wall,’ and sometimes it comes in very unexpected ways.”