“Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia”

Sounds of protest, loud music and agitation bleed into the Musée d’art contemporain’s (MAC) ticket area, an acoustic peek into the immersive experience that waits on the other side of a matte black wall. Inside the museum, “Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia” pulsates with unrelenting energy, an exhibition dedicated to the feminist punk art collective who, for over a decade, has used art and protest to criticize Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Even before entering the first gallery, there is a mixed sense of trepidation, unease and excitement: How do you survive a violent authoritarian state, continuously make art to denounce it and live to tell the tale?

“Velvet Terrorism” is the collective’s first survey, a chronology of the group’s activities starting with their initial outdoor interventions in 2011. First presented in 2022 at Kling & Bang, an artist-run space in Reykjavík, Iceland, where it was curated by Ragnar Kjartansson, Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and Dorothée Kirch, the Montreal iteration is led by John Zeppetelli and Marjolaine Labelle. In both instances, Maria Alyokhina, who has been a member of Pussy Riot since its inception, was onsite to organize the installation. Despite the anonymity provided by the brightly colourful balaclavas that Pussy Riot popularized with their first actions— one of many aesthetic decisions that has contributed to their image of queer and feminist irreverence—the collective’s individual actors, like Alyokhina, have become celebrated, most-wanted-by-Putin emblems within Russia and across the globe.

Inside the first gallery, the visual landscape that characterizes “Velvet Terrorism” is one of intensity and incessant stimulation. Each section is painted in a bold colour (red, yellow, green, white, orange, purple) to demarcate the individual protests, artworks or life events on view. Within these demarcations, a combination of video monitors, Xeroxed images and multicolour tape creates a dynamic environment. There are no headphones for the innumerable videos on view, which accounts for the overwhelming noise. Alyokhina’s presence is palpable throughout the entire exhibition as she herself has doodled, drawn and written the didactic and explanatory texts contextualizing the actions on view. The abundant running commentary creates an additional sense of institutional dissent, framing the retrospective as more than just an apolitical retelling of facts.

It feels nearly impossible to ingest and synthesize all the information in “Velvet Terrorism,” which is undoubtedly intentional. Pussy Riot’s continuous rejection of the Kafkaesque norms imposed in Putin’s Russia takes shape through their posture of colourful excess and disturbance. There are innumerable moments that stand out in the exhibition. For example, in the first room, a large image from the Putin Pissed his Pants, 2012, action is affixed to the wall. The photograph shows eight Pussy Riot actors playing an illegal concert with Moscow’s Red Square as a backdrop. The performers’ multicolour balaclavas and dresses, raised fists and electric guitars cut across the Kremlin’s spires and the oppressive grey, wintry sky. In the installation, large lettering surrounding the image states “Anyone can be Pussy Riot,” which effectively invites the audience into the action. Other documentation of the event as well as a handwritten explanation of the collective’s rationale further populate the section: “We believed that, if we pricked his ass, Putin would jump out of his presidential seat. He would leap up, and run to hell. His fleshy, Botoxed cheeks would head for the hills and roll off into the dustbin of history.” The tone is wry and derisory, characteristically in line with Pussy Riot’s attitude, reducing Putin to a punchline and a caricature.

A recurring motif throughout the exhibition is Pussy Riot taking ownership of their lives and bodies, the narratives surrounding the collective and their images and likeness. This is especially salient considering how the collective has become vilified and the target of propaganda by the Russian Orthodox Church in addition to politicians, state media and the secret police. In sections like Prison Trials, 2012, or Penal Colony, 2012–2013, the violent and dehumanizing responses to the collective’s numerous artistic coups d’éclat in the early 2010s are starkly illustrated. Alyokhina’s personal descriptions of her time in a penal colony, supplemented by images and texts, cement the stakes of the artworks and activism on display, a reminder that resistance comes at a cost. But all is not bleak, as a small handwritten mention indicates: “We won three cases out of four against the prison administration.” In these moments, “Velvet Terrorism” strikes a balance between the existential nightmare that is Russia’s rigged judicial system and the sliver of hope that collectives like Pussy Riot can sometimes win, creating a ripple in a sea of misogyny, patriarchy and other terrors.

In the following sections of the exhibition, the actions multiply and become more complex, the reactions from the state are amplified and extreme and Pussy Riot somehow manages to find a way to survive in its various permutations, to fight another day. In an action titled Burning the Constitution, 2020, a compelling parallel is made with a 1991 action by E.T.I., a collective of Moscow artists who lay down in the Red Square to form the Russian swear word khui (“cock”) with their bodies. Moments like these situate Pussy Riot’s activism within a genealogy of Russian action-artists from the 1990s and 2000s who similarly used their physicality to create political performance art directed at the state, church and media. Seen through this lens, “Velvet Terrorism” stands as a monumental installation in and of itself, another event on Pussy Riot’s impressive timeline. Both an exhibition about Pussy Riot and one by the collective, it seeks to simultaneously inform while provoking more thought about artmaking, politics and institutional constraint. Destabilizing and confronting us with the realities and dangers of creating such unconditionally political art, Alyokhina and her collaborators ask us to witness: to never stop looking, caring or paying attention, no matter how loud, chaotic or disorienting it becomes. ❚

“Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia” was exhibited at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, from October 25, 2023, to March 10, 2024.

Didier Morelli is a FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of art history at Concordia University. He holds a PhD in performance studies from Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois).

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