One is a daring performance artist with Angelina Jolie lips and a notorious part in a filmed orgy just days before she gave birth. Another is a poet and environmentalist whose pre-Raphaelite looks project sweetness and sensitivity. Rounding out the trio is a quietly cerebral computer expert, who has applied her skills both to nuclear submarines and experimental art.
If convicted they could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison. The trial has attracted worldwide attention as an emblem of Russia’s intolerance of dissent.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich came together several years ago in a confrontational art group called Voina (War), which attracted notice with risque stunts. The group painted a 65-meter (200-foot) penis on a St. Petersburg drawbridge -- visible in much of the city when the bridge rose -- and in 2008 staged an orgy in a Moscow museum as a mocking commentary on Dmitry Medvedev’s imminent election as Russian president.
The three also took part in a less publicized punk performance in 2009 at the trial against a prominent art curator in a Moscow court, singing: “All cops are scum.”
Voina’s chief ideologist Alexei Plutser-Sarno told The Associated Press that the three “performed courageously” with the art group.
Tolokonnikova, 23, who was heavily pregnant when she appeared in the museum orgy, has become the main face of Pussy Riot.
“Since childhood I’ve loved finding myself in extreme situations. I’ve always lacked unusual things in my life,” she said in an interview with Plutser-Sarno published in his blog.
In her final statement at the trial last week she said that Pussy Riot provided her a long-sought creative outlet.
“We were looking for genuine sincerity and beauty and found it in our punk performances,” she said.
Tolokonnikova left her home in the frigid oil town of Norilsk at 17 to enroll in Moscow State University’s philosophy department. There she met and married Pyotr Verzilov, who became a Voina member but was thrown out in 2009 on accusations of betraying another member to the police.
When she took part in the orgy, her child was several days overdue. She said she “wanted to stimulate birth by making love.”
She gave birth to daughter Gera four days later.
“Feminism, art and politics take up all her time,” said David Abramov, who has helped Pussy Riot organize performances. “She devotes all her time to it.”
Alekhina, an accomplished poet with long curly blonde hair, is quite a different face of Pussy Riot. Alekhina, mother of a five-year-old boy, has a long background in charity work and environmental activism.
Loading...
Comments