Pussy Riot show opens in Chelsea, NY gallery

They may well have been jailed for two years this week (for, apparently, inciting religious hatred and hooliganism), but the members of Russian Feminist art group Pussy Riot will be the centrepiece of a newly announced exhibition, opening on September 10 in Chelsea, NY, gallery Lombard-Freid Projects. How will it work, we hear you ask - we wondered too. Apparently five video performances will be screened in the space, looped non-stop, in a bid to "create the atmosphere of absurdity and hysteria that characterised the Pussy Riot trial," according to curator Victoria Dushkina. The gallery has partnered with Amnesty International for the show, which will also act as a fundraiser to help the imprisoned artists, their families and an appeal against their conviction.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Ekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Maria Alekhina, 24, were convicted of inciting religious hatred and hooliganism with their February 21 “punk prayer,” “Holy Mother, Blessed Virgin, Drive Putin Away.” In that action, five members of the collective (two of whom weren’t brought to trial) danced by the altar of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour church.