Katrin Nenasheva makes viewers experience injustice through her art in Russia

Russian performance artist Katrin Nenasheva has chosen an unusual way injecting knowledge of injustice happening in Putin’s Russia. The 25-year old activist makes her viewers experience injustice through her art. While speaking to media about her performances, she said that empathy for many is based primarily on one’s own lived experience, and performance art allows for just that.

Immersion for both: the artist and public

Nenasheva has been detained and tried several times after she started activism in 2014. She quit her job as a journalist after the Russia Ukraine war broke out in 2014 and had her first brush with government censorship when she was made to write propagandist articles about the conflict. One of her initial performance in 2015 was titled Ne Boysia, meaning Don’t Be Afraid. The one-month long performance involved Nenasheva living, working, studying, commuting and spending time in public spaces while wearing a prison robe.

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In another act, she along with two other women collected water in plastic basins and proceeded to wash the blood off the military uniform they wore on the streets. In the act, they go on to hang the clothing out to dry and are seen reasoning with police officers who eventually detained them.

Another major cause that inspired her performance is the repeated use of punitive psychiatry by the Russian government particularly for dissidents. In a solo performance called, Between Here and There she wore a Virtual Reality headset that immersed her in visuals of Russia’s psychiatry wards where many are still kept as punishment. Wearing the headset she moved through the public spaces many times asked by people if they could try on the headset. Upon being approached by police and refusing to remove the headset, Nenasheva was detained.

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In what is perhaps her most popular performance so far, Nenasheva chained herself to a metal bed and roamed about Moscow for 21 days, hoping to raise awareness about child abuse within Russian orphanages. The act called Punishment also included many actions that illustrated the agony of those being punished in psychiatric wards. One such action was pricking the soles of her feet with needles, imitating a method used to prevent children from moving around freely in the orphanages. Her art constitutes a transformation and immersion not only for the artist but also for the viewer, who is thrown into a reality they may never have seen up close, never been able to poke, prod or be a part of.