PUSSY RIOT
b. 2011, RussiaPussy Riot was founded by Nadya Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich in 2011, breaking away from Voina—a Russian performance art protest group whose activities included throwing live cats over the counters at McDonald’s restaurants, tipping cop cars, and having sex at Moscow‘s museum of biology—to ‘do something a bit more feminist-leaning’.
Most famously, on 21 February 2012, five members of Pussy Riot staged a punk rock performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, which they turned into a music video titled ‘Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!’ Tolokonnikova and Maria ‘Masha’ Alyokhina were arrested and served almost two years in prison for ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’.
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