Diana Burkot is a Russia-born, Reykjavík-based interdisciplinary intersectional artist, musician, and activist working across contemporary art, experimental music, video art, installation, and performance.

Her practice explores themes of political power / powerlessness and subjectivity, feminism, bodily experience, migration, collective trauma, and resistance through raw physicality and multimedia forms.

Burkot has completed an M.A. in New Audiences & Innovative Practice (NAIP) at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavík. She also holds an M.A. in Video Art & Multimedia from the Rodchenko Moscow School of Contemporary Art, alongside a degree in jazz percussion.

Since 2011, she has been a member of the activist art collective Pussy Riot, participating in anti-authoritarian performances, exhibitions, and international theatre productions. Following the release of the anti-war song and video Mama, Don’t Watch TV in 2022, Russian authorities opened a criminal case against her under military censorship laws, sentencing her in absentia to eight years in prison for anti-war artistic expression.

Her work has been presented internationally at museums, festivals, galleries, and performance venues including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), Museum of Vienna Actionism (Austria), Polygon Gallery (Canada), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), Kristianstads konsthall (Sweden), and others.

Among her recognitions are the 1LIVE Krone Special Award (Germany), an anti-fascist honorary recognition in Dachau, recipient of the Woody Guthrie Center recognition award for artistic and anti-war activism (Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, 2023)., and an honorary Doctor of Letters recognition from the University of Kent (UK), alongside participation in international residency, grant programs and tours across Nordic countries, Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia.