A work by Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the founders of Pussy Riot, has been vandalised in Linz, Austria.
Pussy Riot Sex Dolls was installed in a deconsecrated chapel that stands at the entrance of the OK Center for Contemporary Art, where Tolokonnikova is currently presenting a solo exhibition. The work features a series of used sex dolls, bought secondhand online, styled to look like the members of Pussy Riot, the Russian punk anarchist collective.
On Saturday – the day before the Feast of the Immaculate Conception – the glass partition protecting the work was smashed. The chapel of OK Linz retains icons of the Virgin Mary on the ceiling. On discovery of the damage, the museum filed a police report. ArtReview was not able to verify the details of the incident.
The work recalls Pussy Riot’s most famous action, Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!, when in 2012 five members of the group illegally performed a punk song on the soleas of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, protesting the Russian president and the country’s orthodox church.
This is the second case of iconoclasm against art with religious themes in the Austrian city this year. In June a sculpture by Esther Strauß depicting the Virgin Mary giving birth, an exhibition in St. Mary’s Cathedral, was beheaded. Crowning, commissioned by Linz Diocese, was deemed a ‘abominable and blasphemous caricature’ by the vandal, in a statement passed through Alexander Tschugguel, a high-profile Austrian traditionalist Catholic. Tschugguel called the attacker the ‘Hero of Linz’.
Tolokonnikova is a former member of Voina, the anarchist art collection, cofounding Pussy Riot in 2011. The artist spent a year in prison after the Punk Prayer action, remaining in Russia until 2021. The Linz exhibition features the last work she made in her home country, RAGE (Official Video) Free Navalny, free Pussy Riot, free political prisoners in Russia, a music video created days after the arrest of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The work includes footage of the police shutting down the production.
We don’t know exactly when it happened, because there where no witnesses.
Our museum employees noticed and reported the damage in the afternoon and called the police.
The police registered a criminal offense committed by a person unknown.
There were no threats to the show previously.
