Subject-Object Art Theory

Pyotr Pavlensky turns state violence into his medium--now, in his own words, he reveals the theory behind the fire.

Pyotr Pavlensky’s Subject-Object Art Theory is both a manifesto and a method--an incendiary redefinition of what art can and should be in an era of increasing repression. Known for his radical public performances, such as setting fire to government buildings, stitching his lips shut, or nailing his own body to the ground, Pavlensky has been called a provocateur. In this book, he offers his own framework: subject-object art, a practice that weaponizes state mechanisms against themselves, forcing institutions to react and, thus, become part of the work.

Venturing past the confines of political art, he examines the historical intersections of art and power, situating his work within a lineage of radical avant-garde movements. Whether seen as a guide or an act of defiance in itself, Subject-Object Art Theory urges the reader to rethink artistic freedom; not as an abstract ideal, but as a confrontation with authority.

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.