For Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, Pride Is Still a Riot

After her art collective Pussy Riot staged a performance protest inside a Moscow cathedral in 2012, Nadya Tolokonnikova spent 16 months in a remote Russian penal colony where she was consigned to 17-hour days of forced labor. Most people would have understood if she’d retreated to a quiet, comfortable life after surviving violent conditions and a hunger strike. But Tolokonnikova isn’t like most people.

Since her release in 2013, she’s leveraged her notoriety to support humanitarian causes and speak out against authoritarianism at great personal risk. In 2023, a performance piece called Putin’s Ashes landed her on Russia’s wanted list, and she was arrested in absentia, essentially exiled from home.

As authoritarian governments rise not just in Russia but around the globe, Tolokonnikova’s work continues to be timely. Just last week, she completed Police State, an endurance performance piece inside the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) for which she spent 13 days inside a recreation of her Russian prison cell. Visitors were able to observe her behind bars, making art about political conditions in Russia, where acts of protest against the war in Ukraine are punishable by 15 years in prison.

Outside the museum walls, another sort of repression played out in real time. Midway through the run of Police State, MOCA closed its doors after President Trump deployed 4,700 military personnel to Los Angeles to quell those protesting masked I.C.E. agents snatching immigrants from their communities without due process.

For me, a Russian immigrant who’s lived in the Bay Area since childhood, current conditions in this country feel reminiscent of home in more ways than one. As right-wing politicians in the U.S. threaten trans rights, they echo their Russian counterparts who use the pretense of protecting children to brand any outward expression of queerness as illegal “propaganda.”

This Pride weekend, Tolokonnikova prepares to take the stage in San Francisco for a rare musical performance at the party Queerly Beloved at 1015 Folsom on June 29. I spoke with her about her recent work and why this year’s Pride feels especially like a protest.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nastia Voynovskaya: You recently completed Police State, even though visitors weren’t able to come in for several days because Trump sent the National Guard to LA. What was going through your mind as you were in your makeshift prison cell alone, and why did you think it was important to complete the piece?

Nadya Tolokonnikova: I like to finish what I start and if I think the idea is worth it, I like to see it through to the end.

I think as an artist you try to work with underlying trends, and unfortunately the police state has been a trend of the times I’ve lived in as long as I can remember. Of course I couldn’t predict that it would be such a great coincidence, in the dance between reality and art. But that’s what happens when you work with trends, and autocracy and the police state are spreading around the world.

These crackdowns on protesters, and also the anti-LGBT policies in the U.S., feel very reminiscent of Russia. I’m wondering about your thoughts on those parallels. Is there anything that Americans could learn from the political situation in Russia?

Yeah, currently it’s almost impossible to speak out in Russia. You just go directly to the gulag for the next 15, 20, 25 years. A woman named Nadine Geisler, who helped people in Ukraine, was just sentenced to 22 years in jail. So, I mean, I guess the lesson is, you should speak out while you still can, and you should not just assume that the democracy you have is gonna last forever.

I think we’re trapped a little bit in the idea that history is going towards progress, whether we do anything about it or not, but I don’t think that’s the case. History only will move towards progress if we consciously work on it and protect freedoms that our grandfathers and grandmothers achieved for us.

Complacency allows for autocracies. I’m not a political scientist or a sociologist to really dig deeper into reasons for complacency. I guess they’re pretty different in Russia and the United States, but I think the common thread here is political apathy and people’s feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.

That’s why it was really awesome to see people coming together recently for the No Kings march. When we’re together, we feel that we’re not powerless. We’re actually more powerful than the elites. I think one thing that art can help with is to remind us about this once more.

I’m curious to hear more about how you see your role as an artist and what’s kept you committed to making art that often requires you to sacrifice your personal comfort, your safety and even your ability to return home.

Partly natural stubbornness, and partly the fact that I like to see what I’m doing through to the end, whether it’s a big, overly ambitious goal, like trying to make Russia free.

I think this is about values as well. I mean, of course I like a comfortable bed, but it’s not the ultimate goal of my existence. When I ended up in jail, it’s not cozy there, but I was not really bummed out about it because I thought that I’m trying to make my country a little bit better, and that’s why they diagnosed me with some sort of mental disease. I have it in my sentence, they say she’s overly idealistic and it’s a grandiose thinking, how they called it. It’s not always a bad thing.

How do you go from doing such an intense performance like Police State to then performing at a Pride party in San Francisco the following weekend? What are you doing to mentally switch gears for that?

Fostering a kitten. I found the kitten yesterday on the street. By the way, if any of the readers wants to adopt a cat, I already have four animals living in the house. I found if you care about someone else then you don’t self-center. Maybe it’s not the best self-care, but it kind of works for me so far.

We mentioned the attacks on LGBT rights here in the U.S., so this year, for a lot of people, Pride feels more like a protest than a celebration. What does Pride mean for you in 2025?

Like little kittens who get imprinted by their first caregivers, I think I also got imprinted. I had a really bad experience trying to participate in gay Prides in Russia. Back in the day in 2010, 2011, I was in Moscow and we would get beaten up by neo-Nazis, by the ultra right-wing activists, religious fanatics and cops. Pride for me was always a riot. Even at the more peaceful Prides that I got to perform all over the world, in Europe and in the United States, I still was very drawn to people who were showing up with posters that say “Pride was a riot.”

Hopefully the humanity of the future will use gender roles and sexuality as paints and brushes, just juggling them and changing them as they feel like, without needing to prove anything.

Is there anything you’re looking forward to about returning to San Francisco?

I love performing at Pride, this is easily my favorite audience. People are just there to support each other and support you as a performer, and you totally feel that. Even if people don’t know the songs, they still dance and jump around. It’s a very caring environment to perform.

In these challenging times, how do you balance raising awareness or inspiring people to take action with using your art to create spaces for people to get together and to celebrate?

Absurdly and paradoxically, it always comes together. For me, even at the Police State performance, I put a few church pews for people to sit at because I wanted to create something like a public space in Los Angeles, which doesn’t have any public spaces, really. It’s just a city that’s down for people who own private property, and if you don’t own it, then well, tough life. I don’t love that.

With the limited space that I have, I was trying to do that. So that the space would become not only a place where you come to get sad or scared about life, about the state of the world, about the state of Russian and American prisons, but it’s also a place to connect with others, meet new friends and get inspired. The soundscape was not just the sounds of torture or metal doors closing and opening. Also there were prayers, there were some old Russian lullabies. Whether you know Russian or not, it’s very comforting. It’s something that a loving mom sings to her kids. And so that’s the source of light.

I always like to point out that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we can achieve it if we come together and work hard enough. Together with hard work should come joy, a joy of having each other, music and good food. Otherwise the protest is not going to be sustainable. I always come back to art.

Nadya Tolokonnikova performs on Sunday, June 29, at 1015 Folsom as part of the party Queerly Beloved. Details here.