Nadya Tolokonnikova, the exiled Siberian performer and conceptual artist infamous for her Pussy Riot anti-authoritarian protest disruptions in Moscow—whose Putin’s Ashes artworks landed her on Russia’s most wanted list—has found a home away from home at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles.

“PUNK’S NOT DEAD PART 1” was a short-term performance-based gallery intervention that turned the space into a punk nightclub––or a horror film––complete with a riotous, dissonant, and deafening band wearing a new version of the pink Pussy Riot ski mask—now in white, with black spray-painted Xs over the eyes. Riot gear as wall sculpture, red light filling the room, chain-link fences adorned with ribbons, and large canvases with the word “punk” written in metallic over and over to create the image of barbed wire, set the scene: we are not free.

Unmasked and dressed like a rebellious Orthodox Christian in a white robe with a large crucifix hanging around her neck (and Converse on her feet), Tolokonnikova oscillated between live destruction of the metal riot shields with Christian ephemera, screaming into the mic only to be drowned out by the band performing alongside her, and twirling her long black hair like a provocative and possessed porcelain doll playing innocent.

How loud must she scream into the void to make a difference? How can she grab and keep our attention? Can a punk rebellion ever really be silenced?

Hell if I know. I was entirely uncomfortable during the unruly, ear-splitting, and chaotic performance––admittedly, for the same reasons, my punk phase as a teen was short-lived and never returned to. But, isn’t this precisely what punk is designed to do: to make us uncomfortable, to shake and shock us out of our complacency and into resistance? Perhaps my discomfort was the whole point. Perhaps it qualifies as a win.

Although I walked away with a lingering sour taste in my mouth, I have to respect the way Tolokonnikova moves through the world: defiantly.  I’ll tune in for “PART 2” this Spring, when I hope to get some answers from her new body of visual artworks—where I believe Tolokonnikova shines the most and cuts through the noise.