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VENICE — Thick plumes of pink smoke billowed outside Russia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale this morning, May 6, alongside blue and yellow flares evoking the Ukrainian flag. Approximately 50 activists from the art collective Pussy Riot and FEMEN, a Ukrainian feminist movement, protested Russia’s participation for the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The action targeted what organizers described as the Biennale’s willingness to lend legitimacy to artists and officials aligned with the Russian government.

Around 11 am, as Pussy Riot members wearing pink balaclavas chanted slogans and sang the “Disobey” song, five FEMEN activists wearing black leather jackets stepped forward, displaying Ukrainian flags and staging a topless protest with anti-war slogans written across their bare chests. “RUSSIA KILLS, BIENNALE EXHIBITS,” one woman's chest read.

Italian police and Biennale security staff cordoned off the entrance to the Russian pavilion, with officers tackling Pussy Riot activists who managed to get inside.

“Russia is killing Ukrainians every day. That is why we came here to denounce this decision, and to point out that Russia’s only art is blood,” Inna Shevchenko of FEMEN told Hyperallergic, condemning the nation’s inclusion in the Biennale.

Because of international sanctions, Russia’s participation this year is restricted to the Biennale’s preview days for artists, curators, and journalists, from May 6 to 8. The pavilion will remain closed to the public during the remaining duration of the exhibition.

Pussy Riot has called for current and former imprisoned artists, jailed and exiled by Russia for their anti-government and anti-war stance, to represent the nation at the Biennale instead.

“Russia’s best citizens are either imprisoned for anti-regime and pro-Ukraine actions or killed in jail, while Europe opens its doors to Putin’s officials and propagandists,” said Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova.

“While [Venice Biennale President] Pietrangelo Buttafuoco greets his Russian guests with champagne, drones and ballistic missiles fall in Ukraine, thousands of POWs and political prisoners sit in cold jail cells,” she continued.

Pussy Riot is a feminist art collective born in 2011 to rebuke the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, including the suppression of free speech. Some of the group’s members have been arrested and convicted in Russia. Last year, a Moscow court sentenced five Pussy Riot members to prison in absentia on charges relating to anti-war protest and performances critical of Putin’s regime. 

It was the first time Pussy Riot organized an action jointly with FEMEN, a feminist movement founded in Ukraine and now based in France, which describes itself as an international women’s movement of topless female activists.

“If you want to expose Russia’s art, if you want to expose Russia, then show mass graves in Ukraine, then show civilians without limbs,” Shevchenko told Hyperallergic.