POLICE STATE documents Nadya Tolokonnikova's 10-day performance exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles (2025). Tolokonnikova is an artist, activist and a creator of Pussy Riot. Once upon a time, Americans were far away from the operations of dictatorships in other parts of the world; now, for the first time, we are not looking elsewhere for examples of government suppression of lawful citizen protests. In Los Angeles, Chicago, Maine, Arizona, and Minneapolis, armed, masked ICE agents are attacking protesters with pepper spray, tear gas, truncheons, physical assault, deportation, arrest, and, yes, lethal force.
In contrast to the tactics of unhinged dictators, artists in places like Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia are practiced in the use of art -- painting, installation art, photography, literature and music - as a contrast and a challenge to the abuses of such regimes. In June 2025, documenting the incarceration of dissidents, a founder of the all-women band, Pussy Riot, created an installation with images, prison letters, drawings, and other artwork by Russian political prisoners. But there is more: she also included images of ICE -- under the guise of homeland security -- outside her exhibition at MOCA-Geffen in Los Angeles: brutality and fascism at the doors of an arts institution devoted to free expression.
Suddenly our democracy is under threat. And, suddenly, a book on art as resistance is available, timely and necessary.
