Radical Feminism Unmasked: Guerrilla Girls & Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot)

The Guerrilla Girls are anonymous artist activists who use disruptive headlines, outrageous visuals, and killer statistics to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in art, film, politics, and pop culture. Since their founding in 1985, the collective has produced hundreds of projects including street campaigns, books, performances, exhibitions, and more.

Nadya Tolokonnikova is a conceptual performance artist, activist, and the creator of Pussy Riot, a global feminist art movement. In 2012, she received a two-year prison term following the anti-Putin performance Punk Prayer, which The Guardian later named among the best artworks of the 21st century. In 2023, Tolokonnikova’s installation, Putin’s Ashes, at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, propelled her into a new criminal case and put her on Russia’s most wanted criminal list. Her debut museum exhibition, RAGE (2024), was presented at OK Linz, Austria, and performed at Neue Nationalgalerie, Germany. Tolokonnikova’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Museum of Art and Design, New York; and the American Folk Art Museum, New York among others. With thanks to Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin.

Carolina A. Miranda is an independent culture writer and journalist. She is KCRW's art expert and author of the Art Insider newsletter, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and a former art critic for public radio station WNYC in New York. Miranda's work also appears in the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, Alta Journal, and Fresh Air.