Pavlensky Pulled From Russia’s Top Art Prize: He Once Nailed His Scrotum To Red Square
The political performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky (pictured), who once in an “artistic gesture” nailed his scrotum to Red Square, in Moscow, has been pulled from the running for Russia’s top art prize, eliciting a storm of criticism about growing censorship from curators and several resignations from the selection committee. Pavlensky was nominated for the visual art category in the state-sponsored Innovatsiya (Innovation) Prize, for his performance Threat: Lubyanka’s Burning Door, in which he set fire to the entrance of the Federal Security Service (FSB) building in Moscow in November 2015. (The FSB is the successor agency of the KGB.) He was arrested for that performance, is being tried in absentia in St Petersburg for an earlier piece, and meanwhile has been held in Moscow’s Serbsky Centre for a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.
