DRINK MY BLOOD

Drink My Blood is a conceptual art piece that reflects on the cruelties of the incarceration system and channels the artist’s experience working in labor camps during her two-year imprisonment there. Working on the old broken sewing equipment, the artist would often injure herself while performing slave labor. A needle would penetrate her fingernail as she was sawing police uniforms. Drink My Blood viscerally reflects Pussy Riot’s ongoing passion for prison reform.

“I spilled some blood on the freedom certificate I was given upon release after spending two years behind bars. I was injured multiple times as the result of being subjected to slave labor while serving my time in a camp [and] forced to sew police uniforms. I wanted to make this freedom certificate to reflect the pain every prisoner goes through”. - Nadya

Tolokonnikova

Drink My Blood is the conceptual and spiritual successor to Nadya’s Virgin Mary, Please Become A Feminist. That artwork utilized her prison sentencing documents in its composition; Drink My Blood closes the chapter with its utilization of her prison release papers.

Tolokonnikova’s Drink my Blood is created under the influence of Joseph Koshut’s classic conceptual artwork One and Three Chairs (1965).

Drink My Blood consists of 3 parts:

Freedom papers issued to the artist upon her release after serving 2 years in prison, stained with the blood of the artist. Please note that the physical version of these documents must remain with the artist for legal reasons.

Blood of the artist, bottled, shipped to an address of the collector(s) choice by the artist.

Additionally, a digital representation of the artist’s blood vial will be issued as an NFT to every individual bidder on the auction.

Digitized freedom certificate stained with the blood of the artist, minted on Ethereum blockchain.

#3 will be transferred to the collector(s)’ wallet. #1 will be kept by the artist due to the legal reasons: once convicted, according to the Russian law she needs to present her freedom certificate when traveling outside of Russia to confirm that the artist did properly serve her jail time.