A Russian performance artist was hospitalized Sunday after stripping naked and nailing his testicles to a Red Square cobblestone in protest against the Kremlin’s crackdown on political rights.
A video of the graphic action, available on Russian websites, showed artist Pyotr Pavlensky sitting naked outside Lenin’s Mausoleum being covered with a blanket by police officers while horrified passersby looked on.
The state-run RIA Novosti news agency said Pavlensky was taken to a police station after being treated in a central Moscow clinic.
The Saint Petersburg-based artist said in a statement posted on the Grani.ru website that he was trying to draw attention to Russian society’s inaction in the face of the development of a “police state”.
Russia marked its annual Police Day holiday on Sunday.
It is not the first time the 29-year-old has resorted to eye-watering methods of protest.
He has previously sown his lips together to demonstrate against the jailing of two female members of the Pussy Riot punk band who staged an anti-Kremlin performance inside Moscow’s main cathedral in 2011.
He was also arrested after wrapping his naked body in barbed wire outside a Saint Petersburg government building in May.
Copyright (2013) AFP. All rights reserved.
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More than likely he nailed his scrotum to the bricks and not his balls but if he actually did drive a nail through his testicles he better not plan on ever having children. He would probably have a nasty infection in his balls and end up having them removed. Either way, OUCH!!!!!!!!!! I am actually surprised that he wasn’t hospitalized as an inpatient (either due to the injury or on a psychiatric hold) and that the police were allowed to take him to jail in that condition if he actually skewered his balls with a nail. I would certainly have… Read more »