Pyotr Pavlensky, the performance artist who stripped naked and nailed his scrotum to the cobble paving in Red Square, may face up to five years in prison. A Russian report stated that the 29-year-old artist now faces the charge of hooliganism, the same charge as art/punk band Pussy Riot and the Greenpeace activists whose ship the Arctic Sunrise was seized during a protest. The hooliganism charge is used as a catch-all for most breaches of public order.
The St Petersburg performance artist had reportedly sat for an hour and a half in Red Square, one of Moscow’s main tourist attractions, on Sunday afternoon, with a nail driven through his scrotum fastening him to the ground. His “fixation” act, was a metaphor for apathy in Russia, he stated.
Pavlensky is also known for sewing his lips together in July while demonstrating outside St Petersburg’s Kazan Cathedral in support of the band Pussy Riot. In May of this year, he wrapped his naked body in a “cocoon” of barbed wire outside the city’s parliament.
The 1 1/2 hour protest performance held outside the Lenin Mausoleum was recorded on video which has now gone viral.
Watch Uncensored video here