3 June 2026
Photo by Max Avdeev
You can’t shut up the imperishable Russian collective of political and feminist activists PUSSY RIOT and their global fanbase. This year marks their 15th year of opposition against the Kremlin tyranny.
A couple of weeks ago, the clamorous PRs showed up at the Venice Biennale, the so-called “Olympics of the art world”, timed deliberately, to coincide with Russia‘s controversial return to the event. The stunt made headlines globally.
Mastermind and driving force since day one is NADYA TOLOKONNIK, who spent two years, along with fellow pussy riotiours Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina, in a
Russian jail for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after her protest performance
in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour church in 2012.
Thus far, they have expressed their fierce discontent through several mixtapes,
a series of barbed-wire singles, and countless live protests in their home country,
Ukraine, and the Western world.
And on June 12th, the debut album, titled CYKA, will be unleashed.
Album artwork
Ahead of it, you can start screaming and shouting
in the streets to these 2 bloodthirsty singles.
– DISOBEY –
Nadya: “I wanted to do a classic punk song, in old school Pussy Riot style. I’ve been trying to be polite, writing letters via the Council of Europe, writing directly to the board, to the president, to people in the art world, and dead ends everywhere.
– CANDY DOPAMINE –
“This song is kind of a love & hate song to prescription and designer drug culture.
It started with my dependence on anti depressants, but it’s also looking at everyone
now mentalhealthmaxxing and looksmaxxing via pills and injections.
It’s not a judgement, it’s just an observation and my personal experience with
these things is that I have to be in a long term relationship with them for my
PTSD and depression.”