While working with artifacts, bottling ashes, and manufacturing the faux furry frames for the bottles, I used skills that I learned in the sweatshops of my penal colony. I was forced to sew police and army uniforms in a Russian jail. I turned what I learned in my labor camp against those who locked me up. Putin is a danger to the whole world, and he has to be stopped immediately. – Nadya Tolokonnikova.
CONTAINER Turner Carroll is bringing Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs "wanted list" Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to Santa Fe. The exhibition Putin's Ashes will be up for one week, and will transform CONTAINER into a kind of war zone.
Pussy Riot’s Putin's Ashes was initiated in August 2022, when Pussy Riot burned a 10 x 10 foot portrait of the Russian president, performed rituals, and cast spells aimed to chase Putin away. Twelve women participated in the performance. In order to join, women were required to experience acute hatred and resentment toward the Russian president. Most of the participants were either Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian. Nadya Tolokonnikova bottled the ashes of the burnt portrait and incorporated them into her objects that are being presented alongside her short art film Putin's Ashes, directed, edited, and scored by Tolokonnikova and co-produced John Caldwell.