When you find yourself free, walking through residential neighborhoods, your eyes start to catch the grids and bars that surround us all in everyday life. It’s striking to think that free citizens are surrounded by the exact same means of fencing, distancing, and isolation as a prisoner in a cell. Grids are found on hospitals, schools, apartment windows, and churches. Even the tiles in our bathrooms turn them into birdcages, if you look closely enough.
Our mundane view of countless spaces and institutions is filtered through the prism of these bars. Because of this, there is a vast multitude of their forms and concepts. I felt it was important to reflect our "blood kinship" with the very things through which we view the world.
I have gathered an entire collection of window grids: some from my apartment in St. Petersburg, some remembered from prison, others sketched during walks in Moscow's Altufyevo. Even now, I find myself transported from Montenegro back to the panoramas of Moscow, saving new patterns. But here and now, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, these grids have found their artistic realization.
With these works, I want to show a universal unity—though few notice it, the bars always follow them. And yet, at times, they are true works of art.
Each work is drawn with my own blood; only this can convey the human energy that fills the bars behind our window frames, making them invisible witnesses and attributes of life. The materials used include local Montenegrin tiles and toothpaste applied as a primer on fabric canvases, creating intricate patterns and a "healthy glow" under layers of varnish.
We look at the world through bars—let’s gaze into them together!
Pavel Krisevich (born July 7, 2000, in St. Petersburg) is a Russian actionist artist and political activist, a prominent figure in contemporary Russian actionism.
Krisevich became widely known for provocative performances supporting political prisoners and criticizing the repressive system. His most resonant actions include handcuffing himself at the "Network case" trial, "self-hanging" on the Trinity Bridge in St. Petersburg, "self-immolation" in front of the FSB building on Lubyanka (2020), and a staged "suicide" on Red Square in June 2021.
For the latter, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. After serving over 3.5 years, he was released in January 2025. While incarcerated, he continued his artistic work, founding the "Repressionism" movement—art born under conditions of total repression, reflecting the experience of political imprisonment.
After his release, following multiple new arrests, the artist was forced to leave Russia and currently resides in Montenegro.
His work continues the traditions of Moscow Actionism (Osmolovsky, Kulik, Brener, Pavlensky, Pussy Riot, Voina), merging radical gestures, political protest, and deep reflection on freedom, justice, and human dignity.
