A Russian Man Nailed His Testicles To The Pavement As A Protest

    Warning: graphic images. Pytor Pavlensky carried out the stunt on the country's Police Day national holiday.

    Dan Martin
    by Dan Martin

    BuzzFeed Staff

    Performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky was arrested after stripping naked and nailing his scrotum to pavement in Moscow's Red Square.

    Reuters

    Pavlensky carried out the stunt outside Lenin’s Mausoleum on the day Russia marked its Police Day national holiday. He received medical treatment before being taken into custody over the incident, which he said was a protest against Russia's "police state".

    A naked artist, looking at his balls nailed to the Kremlin pavement, is a metaphor for the apathy, political indifference, and fatalism of contemporary Russian society.

    Pavlensky has form for this sort of thing.

    darkroom.baltimoresun.com

    After the jailing of two members of Pussy Riot he sewed his lips together, and once wrapped his naked body in barbed wire outside a government building in St. Petersburg.