Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova Talks Raising Millions for Ukraine: ‘The Goal Is to Become Putin’s Biggest Pain in the Ass’

variety.com:

Anna Tingley Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova has long been averse to the idea of national borders. Although the Russian-born punk rocker’s career spans roles as a performance artist, musician and activist, the 32-year-old has become known for her activism against the Putin regime — and is what landed her in a prison outside of Moscow for two years in 2012 after she and Pussy Riot denounced the Russian leader during a guerilla music performance.

Most recently, it’s even thrown her into the arms of the globalized Web 3.0 world of crypto and NFTs – technology that she sees as a new tool she can use to help spread her fight the power on a larger scale.Tolokonnikova’s recent ventures as an NFT artist have already proven to be wildly successful: she helped create UkraineDAO, an NFT of the Ukrainian flag that raised more than $7 million only two days after Russia’s first military invasion.

And now, much of her time is spent curating art for UnicornDAO, whose current exhibit called Patriarchy RIP focuses on the gender pay gap within the art world. “I stepped into the NFT world because I wanted to find better tools for activism, I’m always looking for something at the intersection between art and technology,” she tells Variety. “I believe that if you want to make a revolution, you have to embrace what the world is giving you in terms of tech.”The public art exhibition, produced in collaboration with SaveArtSpace, features ten female-identifying and/or LGBTQ+ artists whose work is currently being displayed on billboard ad spaces across nine U.S.

states. The artwork is displayed alongside Tolokonninokova’s own NFT artwork, inspired by an alternate reality in the metaverse where the patriarchy is dead.Much like the way she views.