186. Nadya Tolokonnikova

Conceptual performance artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova is the creator of Pussy Riot, a global feminist art movement. She was sentenced in 2012 to 2 years' imprisonment following an anti-Putin performance Punk Prayer. Punk Prayer was named by The Guardian among the best art pieces of the 21st century. Tolokonnikova's Putin’s Ashes art installation at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in January 2023 propelled her into a new criminal case and put on Russia’s most wanted criminal list. In 2024 her debut museum exhibition RAGE, opened at OK Linz, Linz, Austria, and the eponymous performance piece performed at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In 2025, Tolokonnikova has solo shows at Honor Fraser gallery (Los Angeles), Nagel Draxler (Berlin) and MOCA (Los Angeles). She and I discuss memory, books, Environmental consciousness, young motherhood, Feminism, how to run from the police and protect yourself as an activist, equality, being a mom, survival mechanisms, freedom of thought, how criticism does not equal hate, making things better, how people are not even trying, spreading something good, how paradise is within you, radical activism, the minuscule audience for contemporary art, places of liberation, enchanted and magical art balanced with the raw, and not being dumber than AI, ideas first, thinking while walking, what’s the future of creativity, solidarity, moments of gratitude, making things beautiful, and imagining the impossible! 

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