Upon entering the Pussy Riot retrospective, currently on view in the LSK-Galerie, the former air raid shelter at the Haus der Kunst in München, you are greeted by a wall of noise emanating from the rooms. It feels like a physical assault on your body.
"Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia," curated by founding member Maria Alyokhina, explores twelve years of Pussy Riot’s performances and interventions. In Western media Pussy Riot is usually referred to as a “band”, but its members have always seen themselves more as a feminist artist collective. The exhibition, which was first shown in Reykjavik and from there traveled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, is a colorful, chaotic mix of photographs, videos, handwritten texts, and drawings that capture the group’s confrontational and anarchic spirit.
Pussy Riot gained worldwide prominence in 2012, when five members staged their "Punk Prayer" performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, calling on the Virgin Mary to "banish Putin." Their distinctive look, neon balaclavas, vibrant tights, and short-sleeved dresses, have since become iconic. The performance, which lasted less than a minute, led to severe legal consequences for Maria Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova, who were sentenced to two years in prison for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." The trial became an international sensation, with Russian authorities labeling the women "demons”.
Many more prison sentences would follow as documented in a room called “Arrest Carousel”. Despite the arrests, the beatings and the harassments its members continued their actions until 2022, when founding members Maria Alyokhina, Lucy Shtein and Nadya Tolokonnikova were forced to flee Russia. Lucy Shtein, who had been under house arrest, managed to escape dressed in the bright green costume of a food delivery courier, which has been included in the exhibition. It proved to be the perfect disguise: simultaneously visible from everywhere and invisible to all.
The exhibition doubles as a documentation of Russia’s descent into an ever more oppressive authoritarian state. I greatly admire Pussy Riot’s courage. I was reminded of Edwidge Danticat’s wonderful essay “Create Dangerously”. As Danticat writes: “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I've always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”
Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia is at the Haus der Kunst, München until 29 June 2025.