WANTED (Nadya Tolokonnikova)

WANTED by Nadya Tolokonnikova (b. 1989, Norilsk, Siberia) explores art as a form of defiance and survival. As an artist, activist, and creator of the feminist collective Pussy Riot, Tolokonnikova has spent over a decade challenging authoritarianism through radical artistic expression. Persecuted for her conceptual performances, she gained international recognition with Punk Prayer (2012), a protest in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which led to her imprisonment in a Russian penal colony for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. Since then, she has continued to use art as a weapon against oppression – through performative works, installations, objects, and music. Tolokonnikova has forged a visual language that rebels against conservative realities: anarchic, radical, yet deeply affecting. In 2024 the OK Linz museum held the first-ever solo museum exhibition of her work.