Performance | Nadya Tolokonnikova: POLICE STATE

About the Event

The MCA presents the Midwest premiere of Nadya Tolokonnikova’s (b. 1989, Norilsk, Russia) new performance installation, POLICE STATE. Transforming the Edlis Neeson Theater into a claustrophobic cell monitored in constant, all-seeing surveillance, the space becomes both a prison and a sanctuary, where despair instead gives way to radical acts of creation.

From 2012 to 2013, Tolokonnikova was imprisoned by the Russian government for trumped-up charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Partially re-creating her experience, Tolokonnikova occupies her cell at all times throughout the performance sewing garments as she did in prison, while creating a new, live immersive soundscape that ranges from eerie lullabies to harsh bursts of noise. Lining the interior walls of her cell are reproductions of artworks originally sent to Tolokonnikova by current and formerly incarcerated Russian, Belarusian, and American political prisoners—implicating the concerns of the project far beyond Russia.

The environment that envelopes the cell reinforces the weight of overbearing power, as hanging ghostly banners and a neon symbol—created by Tolokonnikova and resembling a Russian Orthodox Cross—surround it. Works from Tolokonnikova’s Icon series that use bed sheets made by American and Belarusian prison industries watch over the space, morphing into characters in Tolokonnikova’s dystopic world. An imposing guard tower lingers nearby, as a live feed of Tolokonnikova and archival footage from Russian prisons, streams both in the space and further out into the MCA’s Commons.

A paradox of confinement and self-determination, POLICE STATE confronts the brutality of unrelenting control while insisting on the possibility of connection and liberatory release despite it.

​Nadya Tolokonnikova: POLICE STATE is organized by Alex Sloane, Associate Curator with Amelia Charter, Producer Performance and Programs, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The presentation at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is overseen by Moira Brennan, Director of Performance and Public Programs, with support from Daniel Atkinson, Manager of Public Programs, and Brianna Van Schoyck, Coordinator of Performance and Public Programs.

About the Artist

Nadya Tolokonnikova is a conceptual performance artist, activist, and the creator of Pussy Riot, a global feminist art movement. In 2012, she received a two-year prison term following the anti-Putin performance Punk Prayer, which The Guardian later named among the best artworks of the 21st century. In 2023, Tolokonnikova’s installation, Putin’s Ashes, at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, propelled her into a new criminal case and put her on Russia’s most wanted criminal list. Her debut museum exhibition, RAGE (2024), was presented at OK Linz, Austria, and the eponymous performance at Neue Nationalgalerie, Germany. Tolokonnikova’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Museum of Art and Design, New York; and the American Folk Art Museum, New York among others. With thanks to Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin.