Pussy Riot co-founder back in prison cell – at LA museum

Nadya Tolokonnikova, the co-founder of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot, is back in a prison cell — but this time, she has gone willingly.

- PAULA RAMON

At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Russian activist is staging Police State — a two-week piece of performance art aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of authoritarianism and oppression. Tolokonnikova — who spent nearly two years in a Russian penal colony for performing a protest song against Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church in 2012 — knows a bit about the topic.

Through the installation, which runs through June 14, she says she hopes to teach visitors about what she believes to be the advent of a new means of control — technology.

While she is in the mock cell, during all museum opening hours, she will eat, use the toilet, sew clothes as she once did in her real cell and create “soundscapes”. Visitors can observe her through holes in the cell or on security camera footage.

“People don’t treat authoritarianism seriously,” Tolokonnikova said.