Police State

POLICE STATE documents Nadya Tolokonnikova's 10-day performance exhibition at MOCA in Los Angeles (June 2025), featuring photographs, prison letters, etchings, artwork by fellow Russian political prisoners, and documentation of the ICE and No Kings Day protests held outside the museum during her exhibit all woven into the narrative of resistance. Nadya Tolokonnikova as an artist, activist and a creator of Pussy Riot.

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.

Nadya Tolokonnikova wishes to acknowledge and celebrate the following political prisoners and ex-political prisoners who sent their artworks to be included in POLICE STATE.