[5] Pavlensky makes the "mechanics of power" visible, forcing authorities to take part in his events by staging them in areas with heavy police surveillance.

[11] Pavlensky first became known for sewing his mouth shut at a political art event staged against the incarceration of members of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot.

[18] On 3 May 2013 Pavlensky staged a political art event aimed at showing the existence of a person caught inside a repressive legal system.

[20][21] His assistants brought him naked, wrapped in a multilayered cocoon of barbed wire, to the main entrance of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg.

[20][22][23][24] The artist remained silent, lying still in a half-bent position inside the cocoon, and did not react to the actions of others until he was released by the police with the help of garden clippers.

[27] "A naked artist, looking at his testicles nailed to the cobblestone is a metaphor of apathy, political indifference, and fatalism of Russian society.

[29] The artist and his friends built an imitation barricade on Tripartite Bridge in Saint Petersburg, burned tires, and beat drums.

On 19 October 2014 Pavlensky cut off his earlobe with a chef's knife while sitting naked on the roof of the infamous Serbsky Center to make visible the political abuse of psychiatry in Russia.

[39] Pavlensky came to the first entrance of the Lubyanka Building, which is the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service, on 9 November 2015 at 1:15 a.m. Moscow time, doused the front door with gasoline, and set fire to it with a cigarette lighter.

According to gallerist Marat Gelman, the action shows Pavlensky's "obvious symbolism": "The Lubyanka door is the gate of hell, the entrance into the world of absolute evil.

[48][49] In 2020, Pavlensky created a new political art event titled "Pornopolitics," for which he launched a website presented as "the world's first porn resource to involve politicians or elected and appointed government officials".

[50][51] This event aimed to expose the lies of civil servants, politicians, and representatives of power who "impose puritanism on society while despising it".

[55] Pavlensky was arrested and placed in police custody with his partner Alexandra De Taddeo who was the recipient of the sexually explicit content.

[63] Pavlensky also distinguishes photo documentation of "events" from "precedents", which are aesthetically valuable images and texts produced by officials during administrative and judicial proceedings that are selected by the artist, exhibited in art spaces, published as books or put on as plays and films.

[65] In 2013, in front of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, he organized a street art exhibition titled Ghosts of Identity, arising as a project from his journal Political Propaganda.

[3][2] In 2022, his artworks Seam, Pornopolitics and Fixation were presented as parts of the Milky Way exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum of Vojvodina, Serbia.

[77][78] In early 2017, Pavlensky fled Russia with his partner Oksana Shalygina and their children amid allegations of sexual assault against the couple.

Media in Russia reported that Anastasia Slonina, a young actress from the Moscow-based theatre Teatr.doc, had accused Pavlensky and Shalygina of sexually assaulting and then threatening her.

[79] Pavlensky and Shalygina denied the allegations and said the investigation was politically motivated; the case has similarities with the accusations against Russian historian Yury A.

[80][81] In February 2020, Benjamin Griveaux, a former government minister, lodged a legal complaint following the release of videos of him performing a sex act on himself.

[1] Petr Pavlensky and his girlfriend were accused of invasion of privacy and “broadcasting images of a sexual nature without the permission of the person involved”.

Pavlensky allegedly admitted to releasing the video on his website as part of his Pornopolitics event, saying he wanted to expose the minister's “hypocrisy”.

The Prize was later withdrawn after Pavlensky announced his intention to dedicate it (and its monetary award) to an insurgent group and then explicitly endorsed the use of violence as a valid method to combat governmental oppression.