Pussy Riot

Pussy Riot is a feminist and punk collective that emerged in Moscow in 2011. It combines political performances, short public-space actions and musical productions blending punk rock, shouted rap and electronic textures. Formed around artists from the Russian protest scene, including Nadejda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Iekaterina Samoutsevitch, Pussy Riot operates as a group with variable membership, often masked, where roles between musicians, performers and activists overlap. Its first interventions took place in the metro, on building roofs and on Moscow squares, before the 2012 action in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour which led to trials and prison sentences for several members and firmly inscribed Pussy Riot in the landscape of artistic protest movements. Over the 2010s the collective developed a more clearly identified discographic activity, with songs and videos focused on feminism, anticlericalism, LGBT+ rights and criticism of Russian power, circulated both in alternative circuits and on mainstream platforms. Pussy Riot subsequently performed on international stages, sometimes via the multimedia show “Riot Days”, while maintaining a collective mode of operation and a direct aesthetic that combines slogans, spoken passages, punk riffs and electronic programming.