Here’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of a heavily splintered Russian protest art group Pussy Riot, sitting in her installation at a Hamptons invite-only art benefit. There were also dunk tanks, other stuff, and a probably great sound installation by ANOHNI, but since the scheduled Kanye West/Robert Wilson collaboration was postponed, it looks like this was the centerpiece.

And it’s a spray-painted “Make America Great” banner and a fake “electric chair” with a flippable switch (not in the top photo), and shit, I don’t know, what could it all possibly mean? Via Observer:

What is the significance of the electric chair in your installation?

I think it’s a pretty good symbol for…how people are about to vote for a crazy person who is Donald Trump, and it’s a pretty suicidal move. It comes from despair. I mean, I could see that there are some problems—economic problems, income inequality—but I don’t think that voting for Donald Trump could be a solution. It looks more like suicide for me—collective suicide.

What is this half-assed piece pulled together last minute in a freshman sculpture class? How can something be obvious and confused at the same time? My head swims in one of those twinkly flashback musical cues, so come with me, come with me to a simpler time in 2011...

A group of balaklava-clad anonymous feminist performance artists jump around in a Moscow cathedral, the same one where Putin’s former KGB buddy and pet Patriarch Kirill regularly televises his God-endorses-Putin speeches. For those few seconds of high kicks and fist pumps—later re-uploaded with their punk song—they’re tried and convicted for “hooliganism with intent to incite hatred” in 2012. The preposterous show-trial is a circus where babushkas allege “moral trauma” just from hearing about Pussy Riot’s “demonic seizing” on television and someone testifies that inside a church, “feminism” is “a blasphemous word.” And so, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina get sent to a goddamn penal colony for seven years. Suddenly people in America care about performance art in Russia, for a split second. And after they’re pardoned in 2013, hysterically by Putin himself, things change, as they do.

Who am I to judge the artistic choices of people who went to jail for being involved in a good piece of culture jamming performance art? Or the fact that contemporary artists sometimes have to mingle with their potential benefactors at parties in the Hamptons, particularly if they’re not selling physical work? These ex-political prisoners’ job prospects might be limited to scraping by on public appearance fees and making rich friends.

But all that aside, this poppy music business they’ve been focusing on lately is not good. Particularly “I Can’t Breathe” isn’t good, not even conceptually, because I understand that you also can’t breathe, but get your own damn slogans. And this installation is bad. I haven’t experienced it in person (the gala wasn’t accessible via public transport), but here’s a demonstration of one gala attendant “enjoying the electric chair.”

And that looks like that’s all there is to it. If you’re looking for a new Russian art crush, may I recommend that guy who nailed his balls to the Red Square? He’s also recently served some time. He’s still good.