The exhibition prompted the Russian government to file a new criminal charge against her for insulting religious believers; placement on a “most wanted criminals” list and a warrant for her “arrest in absentia” followed. “My job for quite a while, the last 15 years of my activism, is to hurt Vladimir Putin as much as I humanly can,” she told MSNBC’S Lawrence O’Donnell, “and the instrument of my war is my art. We know that he’s incredibly superstitious, so he might actually be afraid.”
When “Putin’s Ashes” traveled to a gallery in Santa Fe, she experimented with recreating some elements of a Russian prison cell and hung out there for a while on opening night, using a homemade shiv to carve some graffiti into a wooden table. As an introvert, albeit one with exhibitionist tendencies, she said she found it a convenient way to avoid small talk with the crowd.
In her MOCA cell she will be installing some drawings made by Russian political prisoners, including Valeria Zotova, who is serving a six-year prison sentence after being accused of planning a terrorist attack. Tolokonnikova will also play a keyboard and other instruments, layered with audio tracks from actual prisons.
“The music is going to be at times very gentle and beautiful and reminiscent of my childhood,” she said, explaining that she will sing lullabies that remind her of her mother, who died last summer in Russia. At other times, “there are going to be screams of pain, or screams of rage, screams of power.”
She is rehearsing the music, but not training physically, for the project. “It’s not as strict as Marina’s performance,” she said, referring to Abramovic’s physically punishing 2010 durational work, “The Artist Is Present,” at the Museum of Modern Art.
“It’s not about putting physical constraints on my body — I’ve done that enough in an actual prison environment. Yes, I can go without food for 10 days,” she said. “To repeat it in a museum environment to me would almost look like a gimmick. What’s interesting to me is to be this living and breathing heart of the installation.”
