Pavlensky’s grimace of power

Since he sewed his mouth shut in solidarity with Pussy Riot in 2012, Pyotr Pavlensky has become one of the most infamous performance artists in the world. Most notoriously, he has wrapped his naked body in barbed wire outside the main entrance of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg for Carcass (2013), and nailed his testicles into the stone pavement of Moscow’s Red Square for Fixation (2013).

Pavlensky is also a very erudite theorist of political art, his own variant of which he defines as ‘subject-object art.’ He is so erudite, in fact, that in 2014 his discussions about political art with the main investigating officer in a case against Pavlensky convinced the officer to quit his job and attain a lawyer’s licence in order to defend Pavlensky. Pavlensky has also, in two very high profile instances, been accused of violent sexual assault and extremely abusive and controlling behaviour. He has been accused of inflicting on others brutality far surpassing the brutality he has inflicted on himself. In what follows, I will attempt to parse the connections between Pavlensky the artist, Pavlensky the theorist, and Pavlensky the alleged abuser, not to excuse the latter, but contrarily to always keep it in view when discussing Pavlensky's work, which is an instance of art from which we decisively cannot separate the artist.