The Russian artist Piotr Pavlensky is due to stand trial in France on June 28 for leaked sex videos that brought down French politician Benjamin Griveaux, the “right arm” of President Emmanuel Macron, in early 2020, who was due to run for mayor of Paris.
Pavlensky previously said he released the video of Griveaux, a member of Macron’s La République en Marche party who was then a candidate for mayor of Paris, to expose his “political hypocrisy”. Griveaux allegedly sent the video showing a man’s genitals to a woman who is not his wife.
The exchange inspired Pavlensky to create his “political porn” website focused on the behavior of those in power – a work of art which, according to the artist, is “entirely based on playing with aesthetic categories”. The work incorporates the video in the center of the file against him.
Pavlensky says that combining “high art” (a portrait of a politician) with “low” or “vulgar” art (the genitals) “caused a real cataclysm in France”. He adds: “As an artist, I struggled to get by. Conservatives of all stripes threw off their masks and clung to me with their fangs like hungry dogs.
Pavlensky says he’s not surprised he’s going to trial in June. “Because Pornopolitics is my work, as an artist I put my signature on it. And since the value system of contemporary art conflicts with the value system of the penal code, by signing my work, I have also signed my verdict,” he says.
“Everything we’ve seen since the moment I introduced Pornopolitics to the public was really just one of many episodes in the eternal clash between art and power. However, the fact that aesthetic categories continue to mean so much in today’s world is a real surprise to me.
Started in 2020, Pornopolitics was presented in London, at the a/political space, last October in an exhibition supported by the Babestation sex-cam television channel. The French authorities refused to let him leave the country to attend the vernissage, his first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom. Pavlensky sought asylum in France after fleeing Russia in 2017. Under French law, Pavlensky could face up to two years in prison for posting sexual content without the participants’ consent.
