Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova Confronts Power and Survival in ‘POLICE STATE’ at MOCA Geffen
From June 5 to 14, Nadya Tolokonnikova brings POLICE STATE to MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles. Best known as a founding member of Pussy Riot, she’s spent over a decade using performance to challenge power—first as a public agitator in Moscow, now as an internationally recognized artist under constant threat from the Russian state. Her latest work confronts control, surveillance, and the psychological toll of political punishment.
At the center of POLICE STATE is a confined cell where Tolokonnikova performs daily. The setup likely references her two-year sentence following Pussy Riot’s 2012 Punk Prayer protest inside a Moscow cathedral. That performance condemned Vladimir Putin and the Orthodox Church, leading to her arrest and turning her into a global symbol of resistance. The Guardian later named Punk Prayer one of the greatest artworks of the 21st century. While Tolokonnikova hasn’t described formal solitary confinement, she’s spoken extensively about the isolation, surveillance, and psychological coercion she endured — conditions echoed in the exhibit’s oppressive atmosphere.
Interestingly, Pussy Riot released a song titled “Police State” seven years ago — showing how this struggle against authoritarian control has long been central to Tolokonnikova’s work, now evolving into this visceral, immersive installation.
POLICE STATE takes place inside MOCA Geffen’s WAREHOUSE, a building that once served as a police car garage. This history adds a sharp layer of meaning — a meditation on incarceration and control staged within a space built for law enforcement. The transformation doesn’t erase the past, but rather it sharpens the exhibit’s message.
Asked who she hopes will see POLICE STATE, Tolokonnikova named a wide spectrum: “School kids, graffiti writers, punk heads; those who lost their motherland to authoritarianism and are searching for a new home and new hope; girls who want to scream at the top of their lungs; the forgotten, the excluded, the rejected…those who want nothing more than to cry; and those who have no f*cks left to give.”
Inside the cell, Tolokonnikova moves through a sonic landscape of haunted lullabies, static, and raw noise. This is not entertainment — it implicates the audience in a psychological battleground where watching becomes complicit.
Two years ago, Putin’s Ashes, where she burned an effigy of Putin, sparked a new criminal case and put her on Russia’s most-wanted list. Late last year, her debut museum show RAGE opened in Austria, followed by a performance in Berlin. She doesn’t make political art for provocation — this is survival through creation.
Hope and rage, she says, are necessary for survival under oppressive systems. “In the world where people like us have no security or prospects, financial or political, hope and rage are the only things that keep us going.”
Reflecting on freedom now versus ten years ago, she says, “Freedom, to me, is the courage to stick to ideals and dreams in a world that’s abandoned both. In a Hunger Games society, we’re stubborn enough to start a new religion through art. A punk faith that empowers the powerless and resists the transformation of our world into a global police state.”
POLICE STATE strips everything down to the cell, the sound, and the systems that break people. It’s stark, unsettling, and deeply intentional. That it’s staged inside a former police garage only deepens its resonance. It reminds us that the structures we walk through carry histories we can’t ignore.
Tolokonnikova’s work isn’t easy (and it’s not meant to be). But it’s necessary — especially now.
The installation is free with RSVP and runs June 5–14 at MOCA Geffen’s WAREHOUSE space. Admission is limited and reservations are required.
Photo — MOCA
