Pussy Riot and FEMEN’s Venice Biennale protest showed the version of Ukraine the EU knows how to consume: obedient and stripped for export

Yellow and blue smoke rose, and out of it appeared a pair of breasts with “RUSSIA KILLS” written across bare skin. The performance was optimized for the press preview circuit, providing free self-pleasuring material for the Ukrainian-flags-in-bio crowd and their patriarchy-fighting-for-easy-body-access comrades alike.

The Venice Biennale! A handful of balaclava-wearing half-naked performance artists from Pussy Riot and FEMEN barricaded the Russian pavilion for all of 30 minutes to protest against its opening in support of Ukraine. Nadya Tolokonnikova, Pussy Riot’s greatest hits machine, grumbled that she had to sneak in under an assumed name because the organizers wouldn’t book her table. Mission accomplished: the world’s most pretentious artsy crowd got another virtue-signal photo op – cheeky dose of solitary-viewing fuel for the right hand included.…