Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova goes on a crypto party crawl

At 21, she is a founding member of the Russian anti-government punk collective. At 22, she is imprisoned. A decade later, she's still fighting, this time using cryptocurrency to help her overthrow the system.

"I'm a super introvert" , said Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the founding members of Pussy Riot, as the elevator headed for the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center, where the NFT Now gala was in full swing on June 21.

“But it's work. As an activist, you have to,” she said of the schmoozing. "You have to put your work there."

The doors rang and slid open. As Ms Tolokonnikova, 32, walked towards the entrance, the cacophony of hundreds of voices intensified. "But when I hear all that noise, my heart freezes a bit," she said softly, switching to Russian.

She didn't stop to recover. There was no time. Ms. Tolokonnikova, a musician, artist and activist who goes by the name Nadya, was in New York to mingle with the crypto crowd at a conference focusing on NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. Her schedule was filled with discussions, parties, panels and several performances.

Since being imprisoned for 21 months for performing a play by guerrilla-style 'Punk Prayer' - which protested the government's warm relationship with the church - at a Moscow cathedral a decade ago, Ms Tolokonnikova was no more quiet about her feelings for the Russian powers that be .

She was released from prison in 2013, and the following year she and Maria Alyokhina, another Pussy Riot member who served time in prison, were founded Mediazona, an independent media in Russia. In 2018, Ms. Tolokonnikova published a book, “Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism.”

ImageMs. Tolokonnikova calls her uniform a "feminist superhero" or "something between Spiderman, Catwoman and Sailor Moon". a "foreign agent", a category used to suppress opposition figures. (As a result, she does not disclose where she lives.) After Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, Ms. Tolokonnikova led an effort to raise $7.1 million in cryptocurrency for medical aid. in Ukraine. "Putin is a bloody dictator, a terrorist who must be stopped as soon as possible," she said.

In the years since his release from prison, Ms. Tolokonnikova suffered from severe depression and relied on art as a form of therapy. A classically trained pianist, she now makes music that crosses genres like pop, techno and punk.