Art and political protest are fundamentally intertwined. Poetry is the language of authenticity and radical, unfiltered honesty. Its undeniable political potential has led to many instances of societal transformation and triggered the crumbling of autocratic regimes. Alla Gutnikova was arrested in the final year of her undergraduate degree in Cultural Studies back in Moscow. Together with three colleagues from the student protest magazine DOXA, she spent a year under house arrest facing up to 3 years in prison over the publication of a video defending the right to freedom of assembly.

Alla will talk about the power of solidarity and community, flash mobs outside courts and the Investigative Committee, and resistance to political persecution and pressure from security forces through poetry and actionism.

She will be reading from her poetry book, A fish called Rivka, as well as fragments from her final court statement, also known as ‘the last word’.

The public talk and poetry reading will be followed by a Q&A.

The event will be moderated by Olga Doletskaya, Assistant Curator at Pushkin House.

Alla Gutnikova is a poet, activist and researcher. She is a master’s student in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory at King’s College London. At the age of 23 she became a political prisoner in Russia in a landmark, highly mediatised case. Her final court statement is translated into 11 languages and can be found in n+1, Modern Poetry in Translation, Ostjournal, Le Média, and elsewhere. Her literary works in Russian appeared in F Letter, Greza, Polutona, Flagi, Articulation, syg.ma, sad girls times, Papier-mâché press, and DOXA. Her debut poetry book in Russian, A fish called Rivka, was published by Babel Tel-Aviv in 2023. She was part of the Exile Promenade documentary show at the Performing Exiles Festival hosted by Berliner Festspiele in 2023. Her first solo exhibition, freedom is a verb, was held at colorado projects, Galerie Jochen Hempel in 2024. Alla is on Russia’s federal wanted list and lives between Berlin and London.

Alla’s Instagram @allagut

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