Contemporary art

Piotr Pavlenski's activism leaves contemporary art in a sorry state

It's February 2020, and Benjamin Grivaux is in the midst of his bid for the mayoralty of Paris, when he finds himself at the heart of a controversy: intimate videos of him with a young woman invade the web. Once these went viral within hours, Grivaux was forced to resign in the face of the scandal. What was he accused of? Adultery. But mostly of hypocrisy. Nothing very nasty or new in the tabloid of French political figures. Piotr Pavlenski, the video's broadcaster, is a Russian performer, staying in France since 2017 as a political refugee. An artist who has just crossed the already well-established boundaries of artivism, taking contemporary art hostage to denounce not an authoritarian state but adultery, adopting a discou

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