Pussy Riot by Igor Mukhin, 2012 – © Igor Mukhin
This paper will concentrate on two contemporary art interventions: Pussy Riot in Russia and Fag Fighters in Poland. Particularly, the focus will be on the Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer,” a musical performance questioning the alliance between Vladimir Putin and the Orthodox Church, which took place at the Church of the Christ the Saviour in Moscow on the 21st of February 2012,1 staged by four of the collective’s members wearing bright- coloured balaclavas; and an art project by Polish artist Karol Radziszewski with a provocative title Fag Fighters (2007 – ongoing), “a fictional urban guerrilla unit, a gay- gang operating at the margins of mainstream society,”2 wearing radiant pink balaclavas while committing acts of violence, hooliganism and sexual abuse, and a series of photos that emerged from that project. The focus of my analysis will be its significance in Poland, where harsh anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes exist in political and public discourse. Both of these collective art projects take an activist stance via their performances in the public space and aim to disrupt the cultural and political hegemony of the state in an intersectional way, questioning the patriarchy, anti-LGBTQ+ politics, sexism, religion and beyond. Besides sharing Eastern European geographic territory and common ideological mindsets, the proponents of Pussy Riot and Fag Fighters represent oppressed groups within their countries and indicate the presence of deep seated social and political issues in Russia and Poland.
I will argue that the use of balaclava masks in these art actions represents a political subversive tool facilitating the collective identity in contrast to the uncovered individual face, while constantly altering between hiding and revealing the face. The mask here is a liminal, fluid and transgressive space that can be approached from many different viewpoints supporting my main thesis – hence I divide my essay into three parts: context / place, hiding / revealing, and carnivalesque / terrorist.
Fag Fighters by Karol Radziszewski, 2007 – © Karol Radziszewski