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.
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 »