MCA Chicago Part II
The durational, site-specific performance installation in which the artist was present 24 seven is described as presenting: “a claustrophobic cell monitored in constant, all-seeing surveillance, the space becomes both a prison and a sanctuary, where despair instead gives way to radical acts of creation.” While there we watched the artist work on her computer to create soundscapes and impact our experience of being watched watching her.
Nadya Tolokonnikova is a conceptual performance artist, activist, and the creator of Pussy Riot, a global feminist art movement. In 2012, she received a two-year prison term following the anti-Putin performance Punk Prayer, which The Guardian later named among the best artworks of the 21st century. In 2023, Tolokonnikova’s installation, Putin’s Ashes, at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, propelled her into a new criminal case and put her on Russia’s most wanted criminal list. She was a guest on our About Art podcast: Episode 186
