Chaotically punk: Pussy Riot descends on Vancouver for the opening of “Velvet Terrorism”

by V. S. Wells on March 22nd, 2024 at 2:03 PM

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“This is the most ambitious show we’ve ever done,” Reid Shier, director of The Polygon, says at the opening reception of Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia.

To be sure, the assembled crowd—holding glasses of rosé and plates of charcuterie—seems too massive for the Polygon’s limited gallery space. The punk-rock exhibition that follows the escalating actions of anti-Putin feminist art collective Pussy Riot is so crammed with visitors that it’s hard to see the walls—which are covered in handwritten scrawls and grainy print-outs that catalogue the group’s protest performance art.

I hear whispers that curators have been dealing with threatening missives from the Russian state. Putin is pissed off—and, in the first video that greets exhibit visitors, showing a balaclava-clad woman bunching her skirt to her waist—pissed on.

People have turned out in such huge droves that the Pipe Shop, around the corner from The Polygon, is standing-room only for the artist talk portion of the evening. Almost every sentence spoken into a microphone is followed by applause.

Next to Shier onstage is Maria (Masha) Alyokhina, the arguable public face of Pussy Riot, who created the exhibition. Beside her are fellow members (and performers in the Riot Days show): former police officer Olga Borisova and Diana Burkot, who spent years in hiding. To her right are Icelandic artists Ragnar Kjartansson and Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir.

The two artists were instrumental in getting Velvet Terrorism off the ground: the exhibition originally premiered in the artist-run Reykjavik workspace Kling & Bang, and has since toured to museums in Denmark and Montreal. On Shier’s other side, filmmaker Vasily Bogatov and Riot Days producer Alexander Cheparukhin join as some last-minute additions.

“One of the reasons I wanted to bring this show to Vancouver was because I had an idea of what Pussy Riot did and when I got to Reykjavik and saw the show, I was like, ‘Oh my god, no I don’t,’” Shier explains. “It’s an extensive history, a persistent history, and a very, very great history.”

While best-known for actions like 2012’s Punk Prayer—setting up a punk show in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior that led to two years in prison for three members, or the 2018 invasion of the FIFA World Cup pitch in police uniforms to protest wrongful arrests—Pussy Riot has organized dozens of actions. These range from slick music videos, to ritualistic effigy burnings, to throwing paper planes or hanging rainbow flags from important government buildings. Viewing the catalogue of events as a whole, you can see throughlines: even as the policies being critiqued or the methods of protest change, the rebel heart of Pussy Riot lives on.

Two Russian women behind me cheer and shout various things during the talk. The women onstage often break to respond in kind. All I understand is spasibo—“thank you.”

The artist talk has a spirit of good-natured chaos to it, and includes some interesting tidbits. Kjartansson met members of Pussy Riot when he was invited to hold a show in a Moscow art gallery, and through mutual friends, Aloykhina—who was under government surveillance at the time—came to see him.

“There was this moment of clarity,” he recalls, “where we had Masha, who was under house arrest with an ankle tag—and she was the first truly relaxed, free person we met in Russia.”

Russia’s increasing crackdown on civil liberties and free speech is the backdrop of Pussy Riot’s art. How do you protest a government that outlaws all criticism? The group’s guerilla actions led to their various arrests—and, eventually, to their individual escapes from Russia. It’s loud, splashy, brash, but also a reminder that resistance exists in many forms.

The news that opposition leader Alexei Navalny died mysteriously in Russia earlier this year led to a moment of reckoning for Pussy Riot.

“When Navalny got killed in his jail, I think we all at some point thought hope was dead as well. But seeing the footage of so many brave Russian people saying goodbye to Navalny at the funeral inspired us a lot,” reflects Borisova. “They live under conditions where they can be persecuted and imprisoned for their position. I think I personally have no moral right to give up, because so many people in Russia are still protesting. Going to say no to this regime, under these conditions, deserves huge respect.”

Later, during a question and answer period, there are a variety of strange queries. Some people want to draw the women into agreeing with their own political positions; someone wants to know how to keep the punk spirit alive within an institutional setting.

“I have this amazing thing in my hand,” Alyokhina says, raising the microphone. “Not so many activists in Russia have it. So I should use it to tell [you] about other people who are imprisoned, and about the situation in Russia that’s going on.”

A young activist asks for words of advice. “Document your actions,” advises Alyokhina. It’s prescient; Pussy Riot was using the internet to help spread its message long before social media reached its current saturation point—and that extensive documentation is also what allowed Velvet Terrorism to be compiled with such depth.

“You have all the tools you need right now. Your internet is not regulated; you’re not going to be detained or imprisoned for a crazy amount of years,” Borisova says. “The biggest mission of activists is to balance this world. Sometimes people say we’re too crazy, too radical … If you feel like you need to do it, just do it.”