Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist punk band widely known for its anarchic protest performances opened a show, Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism, to celebrate the Russian protest art that spans more than 25 years at United Kingdom's Saatchi gallery.
RELATED:
Transgender Woman Sues Over Assault in All-Male US Prison
Some of the issues the exhibition is focusing on are "problems of individual freedom in the face of both political ideology and also religion," per Saatchi gallery's website.
"Political art is a way to change the system because it is a way to ask uncomfortable questions and only then can we go forward,” Maria Alyokhina, a band member said. “If you see Brexit, or Trump or Putin’s presidency with political murders… if you look at this whole picture, it is impossible to think this exhibition is not relevant to today’s world," according to inews.
The exhibition amalgamates powerful visual tools, video, and photography and will feature several genres, ranging from several types of protest art from posters and slogans to video art, staged photography and performances.
"We started to believe at some point that somebody else can do politics instead of us – and that we can hire politicians and they can solve all our issues,” she says. “That is not the case," Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, said to inews.
An important part of the exhibition is the immersive experience which the band members have worked on in collaboration with the immersive theatre group Les Enfants Terribles, where the audiences will be exposed to a simulation of some of the situations the band members lived through during the time they were imprisoned in 2012 for performing their protest song in Moscow's Red Square and inside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on charges of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred."
“It feels like at this moment, in particular, their voices need to be heard,” says Les Enfants Terribles co-founder Oliver Lansley. “What’s been great about working with Nadya is she doesn’t want it to be a vanity project. Our instinct is to celebrate Pussy Riot but Nadya’s is to remind us the reasons around why the arrest happened – and what is important and more widely applicable about Pussy Riot’s story.”
The members of the feminist punk rock band were released from prison in 2013.
"Every time I’m crossing the border or interacting with police, man, it is a thrill," Tolokonnikova told inews website, "because anything can happen."
The band released a new song, "Police State", targeting Trump and Putin in November.
The exhibition runs until December 31, 2017.