Voina

Voina (Russian: Война "War") is a Russian street-art group known for their provocative and politically charged works of performance art. The group has had more than sixty members, including former and current students of the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography, Moscow State University, and University of Tartu. However, the group does not cooperate with state or private institutions, and is not supported by any Russian curators or gallerists.

The activities of Voina have ranged from street protest, symbolic pranks in public places, and performance-art happenings, to vandalism and destruction of public property. More than a dozen criminal cases have been brought against the group. On 7 April 2011 the group was awarded the "Innovation" prize in the category "Work of Visual Art", established by the Russian Ministry of Culture.

Oleg Vorotnikov, a philosophy graduate from Moscow State University (MSU), is generally considered to be the founder of Voina. Activist Anton Kotenev goes so far as to say that "Voina is Vorotnikov". In 2005, Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol, then a physics student at MSU, created the art group "Sokoleg", which focused mainly on large-scale photography. In the spring of 2006, they met with Anton Nikolaev, leader of the art group "Bombily", with whom they began to collaborate. (Bombila is Russian slang for an unlicensed taxi driver, usually of Caucasian origin, who drives a "bomb"). The combined group was based at the studio of performance artist Oleg Kulik.

In early 2007, the more radical and politically minded members of the project created Voina, led by Vorotnikov, also known as Vor ("Thief"), and his wife Natalia Sokol, also known as Kozol, Koza or Kozlyonok ("Little She-Goat"). It was founded on a radical left agenda "because the left spectrum is generally absent in Russian art".

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