Diana Burkot (Pussy RIot)

Diana Burkot is a Russia-born, Iceland-based musician, composer, performer, interdisciplinary artist, and activist. Her work moves between experimental electronic music, performance, and multimedia art, often combining raw sonic energy with emotional fragility and poetic imagery.

She began her musical path as a vocalist and later trained professionally as a drummer, studying jazz percussion at the Moscow College of Improvised Jazz. For many years she performed as a drummer in punk, post-punk, and experimental bands before gradually moving toward writing and performing her own electronic music.

Today her practice brings together experimental electronics, live performance, and visual media, frequently expanding through collaborations with musicians working with acoustic and classically trained instruments.

Burkot studied Video Art and Multimedia at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Contemporary Art and later completed an MA in New Audiences and Innovative Practice at the Iceland University of the Arts. Her work moves fluidly between music, performance, video, and installation, forming a hybrid artistic language that connects sound, body, and visual space.

Alongside electronic and experimental music, Burkot also works with contemporary and neo-academic composition. She frequently integrates classical instruments such as cello, flute, and violin into her performances and recordings, collaborating with musicians from different musical backgrounds. Her compositional practice also extends to other artistic formats, including writing music for the queer opera POPera.

Burkot is also an independent activist whose artistic practice intersects with questions of human rights, feminism, and political resistance. She has been a member of the art collective Pussy Riot since 2011 and participated in the widely known protest performance “Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away” in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012. While several members of the group were arrested and prosecuted, Burkot managed to evade immediate arrest at the time. In later years, however, Russian authorities opened a criminal case against her in connection with the anti-war music video “Mama, Don’t Watch TV” (2022), and she was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison under Russia’s laws on so-called “fake information” about the Russian army. Alongside her work within Pussy Riot, she continues to develop an independent artistic and musical practice.

Her solo electronic project Rosemary Loves a Blackberry, whose debut album was released on the label Anti-Ghost Moon Ray by Gazelle Twin, introduced a lyrical and dream-like electronic sound shaped by introspection, escapism, and poetic imagery while retaining an experimental and energetic character. Elements of this atmosphere later evolved into her ongoing interdisciplinary project Sweat and Blood, where music, performance, installation, and video merge into a broader artistic narrative.

Although Burkot’s work emerges from a clearly defined political and ethical position, her artistic language rarely relies on direct political statements. Instead, political realities appear through metaphor, symbolism, and layered references — creating spaces where personal experience, vulnerability, memory, and resistance coexist.

Her work has been presented internationally in museums, galleries, festivals, and performance venues across Europe, North America, and beyond, including tours and performances throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, and as far as New Zealand. Her live performances are known for their intense physical presence, combining raw energy with emotional openness and fragility, creating an atmosphere where confrontation and vulnerability exist side by side.