A Russian performance artist is hugging the headlines after stripping naked and nailing his testicles to a Red Square cobblestone in protest against police brutality and his home the Russian Government’s crackdown on political rights.

Eye-watering footage shows artist Pyotr Pavlensky sitting naked outside Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow, Russia, before police covered him with a blanket.

The state-run RIA Novosti news agency said Pavlensky was taken to a police station after being

treated in a central Moscow clinic.

The Saint Petersburg-based artist said in a statement posted on the Grani.ru website that he was trying to draw attention to Russian society’s development into a ‘police state’.

Russia marked its annual Police Day holiday on yesterday.

This is not the first time Pavlensky has resorted to dramatic methods of protest.

He has previously sewn his lips together to demonstrate against the jailing of two female members of the Pussy Riot punk band who staged an anti-Kremlin performance inside Moscow’s main cathedral in 2011.

The 29-year-old was also arrested after wrapping his naked body in barbed wire outside a Saint Petersburg government building in May.

•Photo shows a policeman approaching the artist.