Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the founding members of the art collective Pussy Riot, is a once-in-a-generation rebel. Following an anti-Putin protest that took place in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, an action now known as Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer,” Nadya and several fellow protesters were infamously sentenced to prison in 2012. Little did Nadya and her co-activists realize just how much of a global rift they caused, with celebrities and everyday citizens alike pleading for their release. Now a global presence, the once-humble activist group has evolved into a worldwide phenomenon, fighting for women’s and queer rights with not only a new music EP Matriarchy Now, but also a massive Web3 footprint between a variety of successful NFT drops and newly formed crypto platform Unicorn. Additionally, In December 2022, feminist artist Judy Chicago and Nadya Tolokonnikova launched What if Women Ruled the World, a metaverse project that begins with a blockchain-enabled call-and-response.
One of The REBEL Issue’s first shoots was with the intensely captivating Nadya, whom Editor-in-Chief Indira Cesarine personally photographed on the day of her UkraineDAO NFT drop. In between shots for the issues cover, we watched in real-time as she raised over $7 million for Ukraine relief. Following her first interview with Untitled in 2022, Nadya once again caught up with us for the REBEL Issue for an exclusive interview about the birth of the Pussy Riot movement and how it has grown so exponentially to this day.
Read the full interview from “The REBEL Issue” below.
Indira Cesarine: “It’s the 10th anniversary of your release from prison, which is a big deal. Let’s talk about the early days of Pussy Riot, before even the Putin imprisonment when you were first starting out. What inspired putting the group together?
Nadya Tolokonnikova: We started Pussy Riot in 2011, and by that time I’d been practicing conceptual performance art since 2007, so it was four years already. I was new to this genre and this activity. I had a community already, and there was a feeling among my community that there was a need for something that focused specifically on feminism and LGBTQ+ in tandem with anti-Putin politics. It was important because I think those things should go hand in hand. He’s never been a supporter of women. He’s definitely not a feminist by any means, and he’s part of the patriarchal system.
So this started in 2011, and the trigger was that Putin announced that he was going to be the president for the third time, and it meant that it was going to be an actual dictatorship, because before he served two times. It wasn’t in a row, it was his puppet that he installed for the third time. So he made some technical moves here and there, but it was in fact his role for 12+ years. But you know, this is not something that happens in democratic countries, this is not ideal. But you know, shit happens. The third time, he had to change the law for that, and it’s obvious it was going to be turning into an autocracy more and more. And we started just being vocal about it and went to the streets and screamed as loud as we could.
How did you come up with the name Pussy Riot?
We were sitting around with my friend, her name is Kat, and she was my favorite person to balance ideas off at the time. We were preparing for a lecture about punk feminism, and we came up with this idea and this term from our asses, and we didn’t really know what we were gonna talk about, but we loved the idea of punk feminism. And obviously the closest thing was the Riot Grrrl movement. But in our lecture, we needed to focus on Russian art, and didn’t find anyone who identified as punk feminists in Russia. We decided to create it, and we just played with the name of “Riot Girls;” we wanted to just keep “riot” and replace “girls” with something, and we wanted to make it a little bit more ironic and we wanted to play more with contrast and juxtaposition. We wanted to reclaim this word “pussy,” because I’m a big fan of reclaiming words. You know, this has happened with the word “punk” itself, and with the word “queer.” We wanted to do the same with “pussy” and it feels like we succeeded.
And I suffer to this day for having this name, because YouTube, Google, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook; everyone censors things that have “pussy” in it. It doesn’t matter if it’s the name of your collective. I was trying to claim that, since it’s a cultural movement, usual censorship should not be applied, and mostly people in those corporations do agree with me and I have a lot of supporters in those corporations. But the problem is most things are run by algorithms. And if it’s a machine, it doesn’t know the difference between a cultural-political movement and just a derogatory way of using “pussy.” So I have lower levels of engagement because of this name for sure. This is interesting, but I think this is part of the conceptual project, and we never meant to be pleasing to everyone, for sure. So this is fine; this is the fate that every punk gets to experience [laughs].
Looking back, how would you say that your experiences have informed your work in the last 10 years?
My jail time definitely gave me a lot of knowledge about the Russian prison system. It made me familiar with the way that law enforcement people think, and I used that a lot in my art later. I used to talk about law enforcement a lot before jail, but I definitely got a much deeper understanding of their psyche and how to fight them better. I fought them pretty effectively. Some of the people who were in charge of my prison, which was more like a slave labor camp, they ended up under a criminal investigation themselves because of me. And they got convicted for organizing a slave labor system.
So I became a better, more equipped activist, and I guess artist as well, because these are topics that I want to talk about anyway. It gave me bigger exposure for sure. And that’s a good lesson for authoritarian leaders: If they want to put activists in jail, sometimes they can reach the opposite results instead. Instead of silencing us, they gave us a bigger voice and people all around the world supported us and made sure that we were not silenced. I’m super thankful for everyone who has done it.
I gained a lot of knowledge about the prison system which allowed me to start Mediazona and Justice Zone. These are two organizations that are dedicated to the law enforcement system and in particular to the prison system and police departments and the way our court system operates. In 2014, just after we got out of jail, we started Mediazona, and it became one of the most important voices in modern Russia. We didn’t have a lot of independent media outlets and we leveraged our media exposure and our connections, and also just financial resources. For two years after getting out of jail, we collected 99% of our money, we channeled them to fund this media outlet. We didn’t really use any money on ourselves or our families. We felt like that money didn’t really belong to us because people supported us as activists, and we had to give this money back. So we did, and this baby grew and now it’s one of the leading media outlets in modern Russia.
How do you feel like Pussy Riot has evolved since its conception 10 years ago, in regards to its philosophy? Do you think it’s changed?
Regarding philosophy, a lot, but also not as much because we started Pussy Riot as a decentralized movement. We were dreaming about creating a movement, and in the beginning it was just two of us. Then we found other colleagues and then we worked a lot, pretty much every single day on performing, getting arrested, ended up in jail, and after that, I feel the movement exploded and we really saw Pussy Riot groups appearing all around the world. And that’s where we are at right now. We have hundreds or maybe thousands of people who identify themselves as Pussy Riot; it’s succeeded as a movement. It has a few people who are more involved than others, but we are truly decentralized. And say, if Masha does something, we talk about it, and I talk with her about things that I do, but no one has a right to be like “No, you are not allowed to do this and this and this.” And we are lucky to have a really amazing community, where we didn’t really feel that we have to prohibit anyone from doing anything. I think it’s luck, but also something we fulfilled, because we’ve been attracting like-minded people who respect each other, and are just really driven by our ideals.
In our first interview, we chatted a lot about your emphasis in the last few years on Web3 and using NFTs as a cryptocurrency to raise funds for humanitarian projects, as well as activism. Can you share some insight into the most recent fundraisers you’ve been working on?
We are continuously working as a DAO. To be clear about the structure: There is Unicorn, which is an umbrella entity, a mother to a few different projects. One of them is UnicornDAO. UnicornDAO keeps collecting art, and we have our weekly calls, we have our voting system, we allocate a certain amount of money to buy art pieces. And that’s moving along great. We have a lot of really involved creators who are making sure that we collect really diverse art in terms of genres and mediums that those people use from performance art to installation and pretty much every medium.
Recently, we collected a bunch of art pieces from Marina Abramović’s first NFT drop, it was called “Hero.” We advised on the drop, and we helped Marina connect with people in the NFT community. And I feel like this is my role, and one of the roles of UnicornDAO and Unicorn in general: to help amazing artists to step into Web3 and explore it and make it comfortable and exciting for them.
So UnicornDAO exists. There is also an initiative that’s called UnicornX. This is a smaller group of people who focus mostly on activism. So when we hear about Unicorn raising money for reproductive rights, it’s UnicornX who’s doing it. And this is me and my colleague, John Caldwell, and a couple of other people. We are the leading force of this project. And recently we made “LegalAbortion.eth,” which is a crypto wallet. It was a reaction to the Supreme Court decision [to overturn Roe v. Wade], and a lot of people asked where they can donate in crypto because crypto people, they want to donate in crypto. It’s easier for them. Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights organizations don’t have crypto wallets yet. We are actually in conversation with Planned Parenthood; we are helping them set up their first crypto wallet securely, but it takes time. It’s a big organization with a lot of decision-makers. So in the meantime, we decided to create “LegalAbortion.eth,” and we distribute money from there to seven organizations, including Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights. And we were able to raise around half a million dollars so far.
Half a million dollars so far, that’s really impressive!
We do not fuck around! [laughs]
I know that in July (2022), you did your “Proof of Protest” NFT. Can you share a little bit about that?
So we raised over $100,000 for a recent Pussy Riot drop, which was called “Proof of Protest.” The idea is that we sell liquid feminism. It’s obviously ironic because you cannot really buy feminism, but you can ironically buy to support reproductive rights. We had different tiers: The first one was just one bottle of liquid feminism you can buy for $1, and over 8,000 people bought it. It was a 24-hour limited edition. The next one was $10, and you could buy 11 bottles of liquid feminism for just $10. It lasted for 24 hours as well, and it sold 5,000, which allowed us to raise $50,000. The third drop was $100 for three boxes of liquid feminism, a really discount bulk sale of liquid feminism. So when we sold all of that, we raised over $100,000, which was great. Also, the crypto market is kind of an ass right now, so it was really great to see the people still want to donate and want to collect art. It was done on Polygon, not on Ethereum, so that definitely makes things easier because you don’t have to pay high gas prices, like what happens on ETH. We made it in a collaboration with Lens Protocol, and they’re amazing. We’re going to be doing more stuff with them.
Let’s talk about your debut mixtape, Matriarchy Now, which you’ve been busy working on. You have the mixtape, but also you did a “Matriarchy Now” protest at the Texas State Capitol Building. Can you share with us more about that political action and what inspired the idea?
The decision of the Supreme Court, or the papers showing that they’re preparing this decision, were leaked earlier. So that was the inspiration. We could not believe that it is actually going to happen, that Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned. And we decided to do something because I never can just stay silent when something like this happens. I also was looking at the Texas State Capitol for a second, to be completely honest. I travel to Texas often to work on reproductive rights. Last year in September, I performed in Austin at a women’s march, and it was my first interaction with the Texas State Capitol. My green room was actually inside of the capitol and I was performing on the stairs of the capitol. So I got inside, I really loved the architecture, but I didn’t like that every single person who is in portraits there is a white man, and is just history. This is what your history looks like. I remember thinking that it’d be really good to do something there. It felt right. It often happens with me; I end up in a place and I realize that it is a good place to make a protest action; somewhere that has a history of oppression. But I didn’t do it at the time, I just performed on the stairs to support the women’s march. And then the same day, I flew to Dallas and made a fundraiser for the Texas Equal Access Fund. That was a fun, really busy day.
The next time I ended up in the Texas State Capitol was with my daughter. She was on tour with me. I was performing with Marina. It was her birthday, and we were thinking, What can we do? In the evening we would go perform, and she performed with me and Marina onstage. And during the day, we decided to go to the capitol because we’re both activists and we both like to learn about history and how things can be done better. So I went there with her and we investigated, and she agreed with me it would be really good to do something there. So anyway, when we heard the Supreme Court was about to make this terrible decision, we decided to fly to Austin and perform this protest action. We collaborated with Ikiya Collective, which is a collective of amazing indigenous activist feminists. It was a 45-foot banner, with “MATRIARCHY NOW” written on it. The name kind of dictated itself. We first came up with this action and then it gave its name to the mixtape, in that order. So the action came first and then I was chatting with my and friends and everyone was just like, “Yeah, this is the perfect name for mixtape.”
As far as the mixtape’s sonic influence, what we can expect from the music on Matriarchy Now? Has your music evolved from your early punk-inspired sound?
I never listen to punk music, so we’ve never been a punk band. I low-key hate the punk sound. So it was kind of a tragedy for me to do those kinds of things. We started Pussy Riot as a conceptual art project, so we did use a punk sound for our first few songs, but since we are artists, we’re not really married to any sort of sound or genre. So to me, it just all comes down to coming together with musicians that I love and being really open about the sounds. One day it could be metal that we produce, another day it could be dark trap. Then the next day, techno, then bubblegum pop, hyperpop, a lot of happy hardcore. I’m definitely really influenced by Russian pop music from the ‘90s, and just genuinely europop from the ‘90s. So yeah, I just keep myself really, really open. I’m not precious with any particular sound or soundscape.
You have a lot of really incredible collaborations on the mixtape, including Tove Lo as executive producer. How did that collaboration come about?
I’ve been a fan for a while, and then we just got connected through my management. Nothing really unusual, but what was unusual is that she actually was super involved from day one. I didn’t expect her to be so on it. So sometimes I would just wake up to a message from Tove and she’d be like “I wrote a new song for you.” And I’d be like “why the fuck on earth is this big artist with a giant following, who obviously has a lot of things to do with her life, just sitting down and thinking what she can write for Pussy Riot specifically?” I think she really fucks with the idea of this mixtape and everything that follows after is not just a fun mixtape collaboration with her, it’s more like a long-term creative relationship. So we love the idea of the dominatrix character that punishes men for wrongdoings: people who commit sexual assaults, they’re being punished by this raw, cute dominatrix character.
What inspires your personal style? What influences would you say you have regarding your own look and the direction of your presentation as an artist?
I remember in the early days of Pussy Riot, I saw a picture. I don’t really know where I saw it, but it impacted me. It was a bunch of girls stepping on a man, but I really liked that because I think we need to subvert the patriarchy, and dominatrix culture is a really popular source of inspiration for feminist artists. It’s always a tricky thing to create political art, cause you want to be straightforward, but you do not want to be didactic or preachy. So it’s always like, how do you do that? And I feel like using the playfulness of dominatrix culture, or just in general BDSM culture is a really good and inspiring way for me personally to explore topics I want to talk about. In BDSM culture, they talk about scenes and they create scenes; it’s really a highly performative culture. It really speaks to me as a performance artist and also as a person who believes in performativity of gender. So I think I’m under a big influence of BDSM culture.
Let’s talk a little bit about your single “Plastic,” which you collaborated on with ILOVEMAKONNEN. Can you tell us about the single and the inspiration behind it?
The inspiration is me just being objectified a lot, and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that. To be more particular, I definitely stepped into a male-dominated industry in the last year, and while most of the people I meet in the crypto industry are fine and lovely and they mean well, but being in a room full of men definitely is a really specific experience. So part of it is talking about that: just being exoticized, alienated, put on a pedestal, but also kind of trashed and dismissed at the same time. It doesn’t happen always, but I could say if you’re in a room with 20 men, and they talk with each other, they talk business. And then when they talk with you it becomes unnecessarily flirty. And you don’t always wanna be part of that. And I guess there’s no one recipe on how to deal with this situation, but I guess I would just encourage people to be a little bit more self-aware and read body language. Sometimes I would say it out loud: “I don’t wanna be flirtatious right now. This is just over the top.” And yet people still would be doing that. It’s not just body language, just fucking hear what people tell you, what women tell you. So I think it was inspired a lot by some of those interactions with people who are just not self-aware and just keep insisting on a mode of interaction that’s not really comfortable for me.
So I co-create this one with Boyfriend, she’s an amazing artist. She’s one of my key collaborators when it comes to songwriting. This particular idea of “Plastic” came from her because I came to the session and I started to complain about some sexist shit, and she was like “okay, what if we just turn it, and go really light and ironic?” And I really loved that idea. And then I went and wrote my verse. Boyfriend is fucking amazing. A lot of my favorite songs I’ve don’t lately I’ve done with her. We just released “Dance With the Devil.” It’s her song, I’m a featured artist on it.
What advice would you give to someone who believes in your causes and wants to fight for them, but is too afraid of the repercussions of speaking out?
I think the key is to surround yourself with good people and then just go from there. When you have a good community, good things happen. When you’re together, you’re not afraid, cause you have each other’s backs.
What do you think is next for Pussy Riot? How do you see the movement continuing to grow?
We’re definitely going to be doing more Web3 work, another batch of music is going to come, cause I’m practically sitting on two mixtapes right now. So I’m releasing one, I don’t know when I’m going to release the next one, but it’s done, we’re just sitting on it. So I just happened to produce a lot of music that I don’t know what to do with. That’s why I decided to release it finally [laughs]. I’m much more excited about making music than about releasing it to be completely honest. I’m one of those people.
Interview by Indira Cesarine for The Untitled Magazine
To read our print feature on Nadya Tolokonnikova and Pussy Riot, pick up your copy of “The REBEL Issue” here.
Photography by Indira Cesarine for The Untitled Magazine
Make-up and hair by Roberto Morelli
Styling by Indira Cesarine
Fashion Assistant Magali Zoanetti
Photographed on location at The Untitled Space
