Voina (Russian: Война = War) is a Russian performance group known for their provocative and politically charged works of performance art.
As a police dragnet encircles, the current leader of Voina, Aleksei Plutser-Sarno, is in hiding somewhere in Russia communicating via email, Skype, and hand-delivered messages. ARTKABINETT social network for art collectors always extends an open invitation to compelling and provocative works.
Voina was founded in 2007 by philosophy students at Lomonosov Moscow State University Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol. At the present moment the activists Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev are detained by the Moscow police in connection with an anti-corruption protest, facing up to seven years of prison sentence.
In response to the detention, graffiti artist Banksy decided to raise money for the artists.They have also been denounced by right-wing groups like the People's Synod.
Voina came to widespread public attention with their 2008 work "Fuck for the heir Puppy Bear!", staged the day before the election of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (photo right).
Five couples, including one pregnant woman four days from giving birth, had public sex in Moscow's Timirayzev State Museum of Biology.
The Voina action "In Memory of the Decemberists - A Present to Yuri Luzhkov", (picture top left) staged a hanging of two homosexual men and three Central Asian guest workers, references to political stances of Moscow Mayor Luzhkov which have been denounced as racist and homophobic.
A Cop in a Priest's Robe featured Vorotnikov wearing the robe of a Russian Orthodox priest and the hat of a police officer leaving a grocery store without paying for a full cart of groceries, a demonstration of the "invulnerability" of these groups.
Other Voina actions include a wake for absurdist poet Dmitry Prigov, featuring a table with food and vodka, in a Moscow Metro car and celebrating International Workers' Day by throwing live cats through the counters in a McDonald's restaurant "to break up the drudgery of workers' routine day".
In the night of June 14, 2010, Voina (tastefully shown here) painted a giant 65 m long phallus on the Liteyny drawbridge leading to the Bolshoy Dom, headquarters of the Federal Security Service in Saint Petersburg.
http://en.free-voina.org/
