Subject–Object Art Theory

“Pavlensky’s work draws on a venerable tradition of performance art in which the body is used to interrogate cultural norms and power dynamics… . For Pavlensky, the initial action is just the beginning of a larger process. Even as every element is precisely calculated — ‘I have to practice each gesture carefully, where I’m going to put my foot, my hand, because once I’m there, everything moves very quickly and there are so many unforeseeables,’ he told me — what interests him is the state’s involuntary collaboration in his work.” – Praise for Pyotr Pavlensky * Fernanda Eberstadt, New York Times *

Pyotr Pavlensky is an artist and author born in 1984 in Leningrad and now lives in Paris. Initially, his art was labeled political, but in 2019 Pavlensky rejected this term as inconsistent with the very essence of his work. Redefining his practice as subject–object art, he formulated its theoretical foundations and presently combined them into a book.

Anna Aslanyan is a journalist and translator. Her translations from Russian include A Journey to Inner Africa by Egor Kovalevsky and Sergei Tretyakov’s essays for a forthcoming anthology of modernism. She is the author of Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History, a popular history of translation.