Can Art Cost You Asylum? Ask Pyotr Pavlensky

The international press first picked up on Pyotr Pavlensky when he nailed his scrotum to Moscow’s Red Square in 2013. 

The Russian performance artist was protesting political repression. In 2015, he set fire to the doors of the Federal Security Service (FSB) HQ in Moscow. He spent seven months in prison for his trouble and was fined the equivalent of $8,500. 

In 2016, Pavlensky and his partner, Oksana Shalygina, were also accused of sexually abusing the actress Anastasia Slonina, charges they deny. As the case was ongoing, the couple fled Russia with their two children, claiming the charges against them were politically motivated. They landed in France and were granted refugee status in 2017.

It now appears France may have had enough of Pavlensky’s destructive performance art, and that status could soon be revoked.

France’s Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) told Pavlensky in May that it was considering terminating his refugee status, citing two criminal convictions linked to his France-based works Lighting (2017) and Pornopolitics (2020). 

“I was granted asylum as an artist persecuted in Russia because of my artistic practice, and now, because of that very same artistic practice, France intends to deprive me of that asylum,” Pavlensky wrote in his response to OFPRA.

In an interview with The Art Journal, Pavlensky says: "Unfortunately, everything that is happening to me is, though sad, entirely inevitable. Because when and where have artists ever been treated differently?"

For Lighting, Pavlensky set fire to the windows of a Banque de France branch at Place de la Bastille. He said the performance piece was criticising financial power and the transformation of revolutionary symbols into institutions of authority. In 2019, the Paris Criminal Court convicted him of destroying property belonging to another person by means dangerous to individuals. He was handed a three-year sentence with two years suspended. 

In Pornopolitics, Pavlensky published an intimate video involving Benjamin Griveaux, then a candidate in the 2020 Paris mayoral election. The artist argued that the work exposed what he called political hypocrisy, and he called it the first “porn website” involving politicians. 

French prosecutors instead treated the publication as a violation of privacy and sexual-image laws, leading to Pavlensky’s 2023 conviction. This time, he was given a six-month suspended sentence.

The case also involved Alexandra de Taddeo, who had received the video of Griveaux, who was prosecuted alongside Pavlensky. De Taddeo was convicted of privacy-related offences and given a suspended sentence. 

Pavlensky argues that his actions are part of what he calls “subject–object art,” a theory in which an initial event develops into an artwork through the responses it generates from institutions of power. Under this framework, he considers police investigations, court proceedings and judicial decisions to become part of his performance. 

In May, OFPRA invited Pavlensky to submit information about his personal circumstances, family situation, employment, integration in France and any medical, social or judicial support. However, he chose to respond “on artistic grounds.”

“I do not wish to gather certificates, humble myself, or attempt to prove that I am a good resident of France,” he wrote to OFPRA. “I am an artist, and that alone is what matters.”

His response included two books examining his practice. The first, titled Subject–Object Art Theory, was published by Seagull Books in 2025, and Une œuvre d’art face au tribunal: Sur Pornopolitique de Piotr Pavlenski, published by Au diable vauvert in 2024. The publications explore his ideas about the relationship between artistic action, institutions and authority.

OFPRA’s reassessment does not itself terminate Pavlensky’s refugee status or require him to leave France. Should it issue a final decision withdrawing protection, the artist can appeal the decision in France’s National Court of Asylum (CNDA).

"Look at history: artists have always been persecuted, imprisoned, declared insane, and expelled from countries," Pavlensky says. "Whether we like it or not, this is our unchanging reality. This is the true price of artistic freedom".