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Archives 2024

13 Questions With Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, Whose Art Is the Subject of a New Museum Show

Nadya Tolokonnikova isn’t one to dither. Known best as a co-founder of Pussy Riot, she has—after being released from prison, where she was sentenced to two years on charges of “hooliganism” due to her part in Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” protest at a Moscow cathedral—founded a nonprofit to track human-rights abuses in Russia’s prisons; founded an independent Russian news organization, Mediazona, later demonized by Vladimir Putin’s administration as a “foreign agent”; designed an (ongoing) clothing and accessories collection; written an inspirational and righteous autobiography and guide to activism; become something of a pop star; and married a thought leader in the Web3 space.

More recently, though—betwixt and between continued political actions—Tolokonnikova has been prioritizing the art practice that’s at the root of virtually everything she’s done. “Rage,” the first museum show of her contemporary visual and performance work, opens tomorrow at OK Linz, a contemporary art space in Linz, Austria. (It’s on through October 20.)

The exhibition, curated by Michaela Seiser and Julia Staudach, unfolds over two floors and includes 11 works in Tolokonnikova’s Icons series of acrylic calligraphy on canvas; six works in her Dark Matter series, which incorporates calligraphy and symbols loosely based on the orthodox cross; her prison archive; a video archive of Pussy Riot actions including “Punk Prayer”; a very recent work involving reclaimed sex dolls; a replica of her Siberian prison cell; and five art films—including, perhaps most notably, “Putin’s Ashes,” which debuted last year at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles, was just acquired for the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum, and is making its European debut at OK Linz.

The first room, “Rage Chapel,” features the works from the Icons series—among them, the triptych My Motherland Loves Me and I Love My Motherland, a reference to both Joseph Beuys’s I Like America and America Likes Me and Oleg Kulik’s I Bite America and America Bites Me—as well as Pussy Riot’s 2014 action at the Sochi Olympics, “Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland,” which saw Tolokonnikova and her fellow performers beaten, whipped, and thrown to the ground by Cossack militia. The second room is centered around “Putin’s Ashes,” an installation based on a 2022 performance in an anonymous location which featured 12 Pussy Riot participants from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus burning a 10-foot-tall portrait of Vladimir Putin, with the ashes later bottled and labeled. Hanging above the staircase leading to the second floor is a monumental engraved knife, Damocles Sword, along with three tall velvet banners, with Tolokonnikova’s calligraphy repeating a kind of incantation: “Love is stronger than death.” (Another triptych, Love Is Stronger Than Fear, is dedicated to Tolokonnikova’s friend and colleague Alexey Navalny, who was murdered in a Russian penal colony in February.)

Alicia Keys Just Brought Down the House—With an Assist From Jay-Z—at the 2024 Tony Awards

It’s always a pleasure to see Jay-Z—largely because it might mean Beyoncé is somewhere in the room—but his appearance at the 2024 Tony Awards was particularly exciting. Sure, he and Alicia Keys have performed “Empire State of Mind” live together before, but hearing the singers unite on the Grammy-winning song at the Tonys felt like a fitting tribute to Hell’s Kitchen, the award show’s New York City setting, and, indeed, to the New York institution that is Broadway.

The energy of the song—which followed host Ariana DeBose’s opening performance of an original song called “This Party’s for You”—was undaunted by the fact that Jay-Z technically joined the song via video feed from the David H. Koch Theater’s lobby (a fact that did not go unnoticed on social media). Nevertheless, the performance was undeniably fun and brought a welcome note of hometown pride to the proceedings, which have been challenged in past years by COVID closures on Broadway and a WGA strike that forced last year’s Tonys ceremony to go unscripted.

Jay Z and Alicia Keys during the 2024 Tony Awards.

Photo: Getty Images

Can a Vibrator Be Art?
Jennifer Lopez Is Officially in Her Single-and-Unbothered Era

Greek mythology has nothing on the epic tale of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who finally filed for divorce in August after a broken engagement, a decades-long friendship arc, a rekindling, a second engagement, a Vegas wedding, and then a bigger Georgia wedding. (In case you were wondering: yes, I was able to recite all of that off the top of my head.) Now, Lopez has addressed the aftermath of her second split from Affleck for the first time, telling comedian Nikki Glaser in Interview magazine: “Being in a relationship doesn’t define me. I can’t be looking for happiness in other people. I have to have happiness within myself. I used to say I’m a happy person, but was still looking for something for somebody else to fill, and it’s just like, ‘No, I’m actually good.’” Later, when Glaser asked if Lopez had set a “new bar for the next person that comes along,” Lopez replied, “Here’s the thing: There’s no new bar because I’m not looking for anybody.”

Lopez also referenced her epic, white-pants-and-bike-rides-filled Nancy Meyers girl summer in the Hamptons in the interview, saying: “This summer, I had to be like, ‘I need to go off and be on my own. I want to prove to myself that I can do that.’” Important as that experience was, it was also, Lopez acknowledged, “fucking hard.” (Real as hell, Jen; even if you’re truly and deeply enjoying life on your own, it’s still completely normal to occasionally dissolve into tears when the fire alarm is chirping and you have no idea how to make it stop.)

While Affleck has been busy dyeing his beard and experimenting with faux hawks (no shade: breakup makeovers—breakovers?—are also real, regardless of gender), it’s nice to know that the two newly divorced stars are still civil enough to hang out with one another’s kids and exes from time to time. Not to play favorites (I love all my parasocial celebrity relationships equally!), but I do love to hear that Lopez is on the road to recovery and enjoying her singledom to some degree. After all, how are Ben and Jen ever going to get to Engagement #3 if they don’t take some time apart to rediscover themselves?

‘Being a Realized Version of Yourself Is Really Cool’: Clairo on Charm, Her Upcoming Tour, and Finally Nailing Winged Liner

It’s around 4 p.m. when Claire Cottrill, known professionally as Clairo, strolls into Webster Hall for soundcheck. Outside, on East 11th Street, fans are wrapped around the block, eagerly waiting to secure their spot in the standing-room-only venue. It’s been a busy summer for Cottrill, whose third album, Charm, came out in July and quickly went viral online. (Surely you’ve heard the fizzy, yearning “Sexy to Someone”?) Four shows into her five-night residency in New York, she chats through notes from the previous day’s performance with her band onstage. Then, after running through “Juna,” “Thank You,” and “Echo,” Cottrill meets me in her dressing room. She cracks open a package of Cafe Bustelo, her preferred brand of coffee, and offers me a cup while we talk.

“The whole point of having short-term residencies in LA and New York was so that we’d have, like, 10 shows under our belt before we embark on a tour in the rest of the country and the world. Having that practice and language built amongst the band is important,” Cottrill says, reflecting on her first headlining shows in nearly two years. Still, the crowds both in New York and Los Angeles, where she played five nights at the Fonda Theatre near the start of the month, came prepared: “It’s definitely wild to hear people singing the words back to me,” she says. “It’s always been a wild phenomenon for me.”

Cottrill picked both residency venues for their sound quality, which she could remember from attending shows there herself in years past. “Going to see live music was such a big part of my growing up,” she says. “What more could I want than to be supplying an experience like that for teenagers? It’s so sweet.”

While Charm has been charming Clairo fans for months now, its groovy sound freely borrowing from jazz, soul, and psychedelic folk, Cottrill has been living with the album for the better part of a year since recording it in her upstate New York home with co-producer Leon Michels. “I go into recording knowing what I put out might not be everybody’s favorite album, but I think as long as I feel like I’m progressing and moving my own personal needle, then it’s worth putting out,” she says.

With Millions of Glass Beads, the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Creates the Monumental Out of the Minute

There’s a pleasing ease and sensuousness to “Trinket,” Kapwani Kiwanga’s exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. That comes from not only its primary materials—millions of tiny glass beads, made on the nearby island of Murano (where glass has been produced for at least six centuries) and then strung into sweeping curtains lining the structure—but also its soothing arrangement of colors that shift from gradient to imperceptible depending on your vantage point: pale yellow, sunset orange, white, maroon, and the rare, prized cobalt draped across the building’s exterior, quivering with the breeze off the Venetian Lagoon.

This immersive environment, covering the pavilion’s interior and exterior, brings an expansiveness (and sheer beauty) to surely one of the smallest pavilions in the Giardini—and installations with such alluring aesthetic qualities are frankly rare on these grounds of late. “So much of contemporary art is ugly,” a fellow critic remarks as we appreciatively survey the installation. Before I can consider that pith, I overhear a guard sharply admonish a visitor for accidentally brushing a bead curtain: “The beads are all made by hand and strung by hand—all by hand!”

Kapwani Kiwanga, Impiraresse (Blue), 2024. Cobalt glass beads, nylon-coated metal wire, metal components, dimensions variable.

Photo: Valentina Mori

Kapwani Kiwanga, Transfer I (Metal, breath, palm oil, beads), 2024. Black steel, blown glass, palm oil, glass beads, 163 × 72.5 × 30 cm.

Photo: Valentina Mori

Underscoring this preciousness is the fact that Canadian-born, Paris-based Kiwanga—the first Black woman artist selected for the country’s pavilion—considers the various materials she works with as documents or witnesses, bearers of histories, economies, and culture. Research is at the heart of her practice; she estimates her process is 70% research and 30% production.

In “Trinket,” the miniature seed beads, or conterie, pack a rich history dating back to the 15th century, when they spread from Murano via commerce routes linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Besides acting as currency in some communities (conterie is derived from the word for counting), the glass beads became part of material cultures in these far-flung places, appearing in jewelry and clothes and acquiring important ritual, aesthetic, and symbolic value. The exhibition explores this network of trade, power structures, influences, and cultural exchange and examines disparities in how seed beads were perceived and the value assigned to them (European traders, for example, considered them mere trinkets), while also reflecting on the enduring legacy of the transoceanic trade.

Kapwani Kiwanga, Transfer III (Metal, wood, beads), 2024. Wood, Pernambuco pigment, copper, glass beads, 160 × 100 × 66 cm.

Photo: Valentina Mori

Kendall Jenner Stepped Out For a Chic (and Barefoot?) Museum Date With Bad Bunny at the Louvre

Personally, I think a museum date is best experienced at the very beginning of a relationship—when you’re still new enough to each another’s quirks and whims to convince each other that you really love art and are, in fact, practically a walking Gardner’s Art Through the Ages textbook—but now that they’re (allegedly) back together, Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny seem to be embracing their artistic side. On Wednesday, a few nights after appearing at Vogue World: Paris, the two were spotted at the Louvre, where they were treated to a private late-night tour.

A Kendall/Bad Bunny date is always a cause for celebration, but there’s one detail that makes this little outing particularly exciting from a fashion (or…orthopedic?) standpoint: Jenner paired her pretty black asymmetrical skirt and matching top with bare feet, continuing a trend that no less an authority than Gwyneth Paltrow is most widely credited with popularizing. Is it peak rich-person behavior to go shoeless at one of Europe’s foremost cultural institutions? Yes, but compared to donating to Trump’s 2024 campaign or buying a Tesla Cybertruck, I think it’s a relatively harmless expression of extreme wealth. Let Kendall live! Honestly, if you gave me an evening tour of the Louvre, the first thing I would do is slide my shoes off; next, I’d take my bra off; and by the time you came by to kick me out, I’d fully be wrapped up in a Slanket next to the Seurats.

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Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher, and the Art of the Public Feud

Don’t look back in anger—Oasis, the prodigal sons of Brit-pop, is returning. After years of public feuding and subtweets and alleged battery with a cricket bat, the Gallagher brothers—Liam and Noel, obvs—are working it out on the remix, with a rash of 2025 summer dates announced on their website. (This is as good a time as any to say that “Wonderwall” is a masterpiece; no notes.)

I’m not a music writer, so I won’t bore you with my clanky synonyms for melody, but Oasis was, of course, a cultural phenomenon. At their zenith—arguably their infamous two-consecutive-night Knebworth gigs in 1996—Oasis embodied a very particular swaggering Manchester-ness, an unmatched scally confidence that butted up against a more constructed, dare I say pretentious, British music scene. Look, most of the ’90s had a nostalgic ’60s feeling—bedrooms across the land had lava lamps and translucent inflatable chairs—and Oasis was the most Beatles-esque of the mid-century spittle that doused Brit-pop. And where Blur and Suede and Pulp felt art schooled and frustrated with their own middle class–ness, Oasis were at the other end of the British spectrum, a working-class rock band chancing their luck with nothing to lose. Brit-pop, broadly speaking, was whimsical and essentially polite. Oasis were brash, lawless, and comprehensively out of fucks.

One of the things that makes Oasis feel so British is their knack for taking themselves incredibly seriously while also being very, very witty. Their imaginative lyricism goes beyond their songwriting, and all their spats seem hilarious. Noel described Liam as “a man with a fork in a world of soup.” Liam has more beefs than an episode of The Bear—with Damon “that dick out of blur” Albarn, the Spice Girls’ (Mel C (who offered to fight Liam at the Brits), and, in a seemingly neverending feud, with Robbie “fat fucking idiot” Williams. Liam once said, “Chris Martin looks like a geography teacher,” called footballer Wayne Rooney “a fucking balloon with a fucking Weetabix crushed on top,” and said, “Everyone [in Mumford & Sons] looks like they’ve got fucking nits and eat lentil soup with their sleeves rolled up.” But Liam reserves his burning ire for “old brown tongue” and “the Ronnie Corbett of rock n roll” Noel, who reportedly temporarily left Oasis after Liam threw a tambourine at his head.

I’m glad Oasis are back together—a bajillion people singing “Wonderwall” live will be transcendent—but, I dunno, I’m sort of hoping for a bit of drama between the bros? I just don’t think their dueling egos can relax enough for long enough—even given the rumored £50 million they’re meant to be making. It’s part of the reason their rift has been so captivating—and their reunion will be so entertaining.

All the Winners at the 2024 MTV VMAs

The 2024 MTV Video Music Awards aired live from Long Island’s UBS Arena on September 11, with Megan Thee Stallion as the ceremony’s charismatic host and all manner of exciting musical talents—from Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter to Lenny Kravitz, Shawn Mendes, and Rauw Alejandro—lined up to perform. But with such competitive categories this year (Ariana vs. Taylor! Bad Bunny vs. Eminem! Beyoncé vs. Billie!) which nominated artists walked away with the night’s top prizes? Follow along for updates on all the big moonperson winners at this year’s VMAs.

Video of the Year

WINNER: Taylor Swift ft. Post Malone, “Fortnight”

Ariana Grande, “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)”

Billie Eilish, “LUNCH”

Doja Cat, “Paint The Town Red”

Eminem, “Houdini”

SZA, “Snooze”

Best Latin

WINNER: Anitta, “Mil Veces”

Bad Bunny, “MONACO”

KAROL G, “MI EX TENÍA RAZÓN”

Myke Towers, “LALA”

Peso Pluma & Anitta, “BELLAKEO”

Rauw Alejandro, “Touching The Sky”

Shakira & Cardi B, “Puntería”

Best New Artist

WINNER: Chappell Roan

Benson Boone

Gracie Abrams

Shaboozey

Teddy Swims

Tyla

Best Hip–Hop

WINNER: Eminem, “Houdini”

Drake ft. Sexyy Red & SZA, “Rich Baby Daddy “

GloRilla, “Yeah Glo!”

Gunna, “fukumean”

Megan Thee Stallion, “BOA”

Travis Scott ft. Playboi Carti, “FE!N”

Best Choreography

WINNER: Dua Lipa, “Houdini” – Choreography by Charm La’Donna

Bleachers, “Tiny Moves” – Choreography by Margaret Qualley

LISA, “Rockstar” – Choreography by Sean Bankhead

Rauw Alejandro, “Touching The Sky” – Choreography by Felix ‘Fefe’ Burgos

Tate McRae, “greedy” – Choreography by Sean Bankhead

Troye Sivan, “Rush” – Choreography by Sergio Reis, Mauro Van De Kerkhof

Best Visual Effects

WINNER: Eminem, “Houdini” – Visual Effects by Synapse Virtual Production, Louise Lee, Rich Lee, Metaphysic, Flawless Post

Ariana Grande, “the boy is mine” – Visual Effects by Digital Axis

Justin Timberlake, “Selfish” – Visual Effects by Candice Dragonas

Megan Thee Stallion, “BOA” – Visual Effects by Mathematic

Olivia Rodrigo, “get him back!” – Visual Effects by Cooper Vacheron, Preston Mohr, Karen Arakelian, Justin Johnson

Taylor Swift ft. Post Malone, “Fortnight” – Visual Effects by Parliament

Song of the Year

WINNER: Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”

Beyoncé, “TEXAS HOLD ’EM”

Jack Harlow, “Lovin On Me”

Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”

Taylor Swift ft. Post Malone

Teddy Swims, “Lose Control”

Best Afrobeats

WINNER: Tyla, “Water”

We’re Holding Space for All the Very Best Wicked Memes

Wicked mania has officially hit, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to escape constant pop-cultural references to the Land of Oz, Elphaba, Galinda, and the great Bowen Yang in arguably the gayest supporting role of all time. (Let me be clear: This is a major compliment.) While the moviegoing experience itself is obviously the pinnacle of the whole Wicked thing, there’s also plenty of fun to be had in participating in the online discourse; below, find a roundup of our very favorite Wicked memes.

Holding space for ‘Defying Gravity’

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This particular meme is drawn from an interview between Wicked stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo and Out reporter Tracy E. Gilchrist, who said to Erivo: “I’ve seen this week, people are taking the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ and really holding space with that and feeling power in that.” Is this a nutso way to refer to…people listening to a song? Yes. Am I going to be repeating “really holding space with that and feeling power in that” for the rest of the holiday season? Of course. I am in queer media, after all!

Gaylinda

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