“It was a small thing, it was forty seconds, it was one chorus and one verse in the Cathedral, but I believe that every big thing was small from the beginning and these small steps that we are doing everyday are a protest,” Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina tells us, explaining how the activist group’s 2013 Punk Prayer protest built into something vitally important, on a global level, and still continues to make waves.

It was in the run up to Russia’s 2013 elections, when Pussy Riot members Maria, Nadya and Kat took to the altar of Moscow’s Cathedral, Christ the Savior, to perform Punk Prayer, a protest song against the Orthodox Church’s support of Putin. Following the trio’s rapid arrest for anti-establishment behaviour and much campaigned for release, Pussy Riot have become world famous for their unwavering activism, anti-Putin punk and protest art.

With next year seeing in a new election in Russia and Alexei Navalny – essentially the strongest candidate for opposition against Putin – having been barred from standing in the election, Russia’s attempts at posing as a democracy are becoming more terrifying and ridiculous by the day.

The arrest of Kirill Serebrennikov, the director of Moscow’s Gogol Centre, earlier this year can be seen as a clear indication of a state crackdown against the arts and the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia. Now more than ever with the increased repression the need for a movement from apathy to participation is essential.

This November sees the Saatchi Gallery’s opening of an exhibition dedicated to Post-Soviet Union protest art exploring art’s unique place in exploring the challenges to individual freedom of expression in the face of political ideology and religion. The exhibition features a broad range of protest art, from posters and slogans to video art, staged photography and immersive performances — all in response to the crisis of freedom of expression in Russian today.

Below, we talk to Maria of Pussy Riot to discuss the group’s mission, progress and the growing move from apathy to protest through demonstration and art amongst Russia’s youth.

Laura Isabella: I wanted to start by discussing how and why Pussy Riot was founded.
Maria Alyokhina: It started in Moscow in the end of 2011, beginning of 2012. Putin announced he was going to be President for the third time and we decided to shout. It’s five years since that time, a lot of different forms of political art protests have been made by us. It’s not only actions but also words in the court, it’s prison protests and court rulings against prison guards. It’s political theatre, it’s the independent media honour which we started with Nadya after we’d been released from prison [following their arrests for Punk Prayer]. In the Spring of 2014 a lot of journalists were fired and a lot of independent media were crushed because they refused to cover the Crimea crisis in the way the government wanted them to. Some of them were our close friends and that’s how Pussy Riot became involved – and now it’s in the top ten quotations on the Internet in Russia. It’s become popular to write about Russian prisons and the violence which we have in Russian prisons and police stations. Now almost all media covers political courts which are happening. It’s become an everyday reality, give years ago the Pussy Riot case was quite surprising and now you can go to prison just because of a facebook post, or peaceful protests against Putin.

Laura: There have recently been a lot of anti-government protests in Russia, and a lot of school-age youth have been arrested, is it this younger generation you are talking to? Do you feel they present a hope for the country?
Maria: It’s really great that now, in 2017, teenagers are going to the street. It shows that this government can censor the media, they can do 24 hours propaganda, they can send police to demonstrations, but they cannot cut of people and especially young people and everybody in Russia sees what’s going on and they see that Putin’s team and his government are lying. They are liars. And there will always be a place for truth.

“…we didn’t expect a prison term, we didn’t expect articles, we didn’t expect international attention, we just made what we felt we needed to.”

Laura: You’ve got the next Russian general election coming up next year, what progress do you think Pussy Riot have made? You’ve gone from Punk Prayer to being recognised and known worldwide for your protest art. How do you feel that everything has progressed from the reason you created Pussy Riot to now?
Maria: I think through the questions we asked, a lot of people understood something. But it’s a protest, it’s not done yet. I wrote a book called Riot Days and in that I showed examples of the choices I made, along with the people who were together with me at different times in the story of Pussy Riot. I believe in the personal choice of every person, of every human, because we didn’t expect a prison term, we didn’t expect articles, we didn’t expect international attention, we just made what we felt we needed to. It was a small thing, it was forty seconds, it was one chorus and one verse in the Cathedral, but I believe that every big thing was small from the beginning and these small steps that we are doing everyday are a protest.

Laura: You’ve said that Pussy Riot stand on the border of punk and art, how does that work ideologically? There’s a big crackdown from Putin against freedom of art and to maintain funding people are even self-censoring their work. How does the punk and the art come together if art is normally considered to be establishment based?
Maria: There is not only government censorship, but as you’ve said there is establishment censorship as well. I mean we should, all of us, overcome fear and apathy. You cannot say you are a contemporary artist if you are out of politics, if you are self-censoring your work. Being out of politics means to have a position of political apathy. It doesn’t matter where you’re living, in Great Britain or in Russia. If you are doing something, if you are asking uncomfortable questions you are always going to have difficulties, but only through going through those difficulties can you change and grow and come to understand something which you have no possibility of understanding if you are living in a room with soft walls.

“I think that without change, without questions, the world will just stop. So, we are asking those questions.”

Laura: Definitely. You’ve said from small things can come these big things – people taking to the streets, a reversal of past apathy amongst youth, apathy to action — do you have a new mission statement for the future?
Maria: The future is now. You’re in an exhibition where you can see the work protest art people are making. The exhibition isn’t made to show our videos, you can see those on YouTube but you can see works of artists who created the context and who appeared because of our case and stand up in solidarity with us in Russia. This is amazing – I mean for me, I’ve been in jail during that time and my mother would come and show me pieces of paper with these artists and their works, but now we can see it together and it’s not like the old art that was done. It shows protest art in Russia and how and why it is important that the world sees it. Because here [in the Saatchi exhibition] it is works on the wall, but in Russia there is a big story attached to each work… our friends were attacked, our friends were arrested… some of them left the country and it’s an important story which should be known.

Laura: Do you see art as a platform for change then?
Maria: Definitely yes.

Laura: What do you feel about the worldwide attention that you’ve attracted? How do you feel your message has transformed in the eyes of western people?
Maria: Each person has their own interpretation of things, I mean, I think Pussy Riot is one of the examples of how the message of protest can be international. I think Pussy Riot is a positive example, because there aren’t so many examples.

Laura: Pussy Riot has become the example of art opening up the possibility of a punk, anti-establishment protest?
Maria: I think it’s just about breaking the rules, because – especially in Russia – we have a huge number of rules that no one can explain and they just copy them and copy them from the past and they are totally not connected with reality, and a lot of them are hypocrites in that sense. I think that without change, without questions, the world will just stop. So, we are asking those questions.