To mark the opening of the exhibition Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal is presenting a conversation between Maria Alyokhina, Pussy Riot member and co-curator of the original exhibition presented at Kling & Bang in Iceland, and Ragnar Kjartansson, internationally renowned artist and instigator of the original exhibition project. The conversation will be moderated by John Zeppetelli, director and chief curator of the MAC, who also curated the exhibition.
The exhibition focuses on Pussy Riot’s artistic protests in Russia, collected by Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina, and it is curated by Ragnar Kjartansson, Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and Dorothée Kirch, with John Zeppetelli and Marjolaine Labelle for the presentation at the MAC. The performances, music, and videos created by the feminist punk art collective Pussy Riot, formed in Moscow in 2011, are characterized by provocative and politically charged lyrics and actions. Guided by the dictum that all protest art should be “desperate, sudden, and joyous,” Pussy Riot has courageously, and with a wry smile, shone a light on the brutal injustices that the Russian state inflicts on its citizens through political imprisonment, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions, mysterious poisonings, aggressive surveillance, and other means of suppressing critical voices.
Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia, Pussy Riot’s first survey exhibition, was initially presented at Kling & Bang, an artist run space in Reykjavik. The exhibition documents Pussy Riot actions, street activism and the repressive Russian context in which they take place. It was an encounter in Moscow between Maria “Masha” Alyokhina and Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson that led to this project. Kjartansson, who curated the Reykjavik exhibition with Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and Dorothée Kirch, has described the group’s work as having a “non-consensual relationship with the state.” Indeed, Pussy Riot has used the police state’s apparatus of repression and authoritarianism as a creative partner, engaging in an uneasy “dance with the devil.” The show amply documents both the variety of Pussy Riot’s actions and the reactions and punishments meted out by the authorities.
