Pyotr Pavlensky's sliced ear – and three other painful artworks

Russian performance artist and activist Pyotr Pavlensky has cut off his ear while sitting naked on the roof of a psychiatric hospital in Moscow in protest against the forced psychiatric treatment of dissidents in Russia.

In a statement released to the media, Pavlensky explains the message behind his work: "The knife severs the earlobe from the body. The granite wall of the psychiatric institute separates the sane from the insane. The police give themselves the power to determine the threshold between reason and madness."

The artist, who previously wrapped himself in barbed wire and sewed his lips shut, is most well known for nailing his testicles to Red Square last year as "a metaphor for the apathy, political indifference and fatalism of modern Russian society".

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He was removed by police and taken to hospital after his latest performance and is said to be recovering, according to Russia Today.

However, Pavlensky is just one in a long line of protest and performance artists who use physical pain and violence to explore and confront societal concerns and fears.

Marina Abromovich

Often described as the controversial grandmother of performance art, Abromivic has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form, often by inflicting physical pain on herself. She explains that her work is about confronting and getting rid of "our three main fears in life; the fear of dying, the fear of suffering, the fear of pain".

In one of her most well-known pieces, Rhythm 0, the award-winning artist allowed the audience to inflict as much pain – or pleasure – on her as they pleased. In a gallery, 72 objects were placed on a table, including a loaded gun, razor blades and feathers and the audience was invited to use them on her as they pleased. She says it was staged in order to explore how the public loses control. "It [was] frightening," she told the Daily Telegraph.

Hermann Nitsch

The Austrian artist's performances often incorporated nudity, animal corpses and the consumption of blood in what he called 'Orgiastic Mystery Theater'. He was responsible for "reinventing an art that exists in real, corporeal, and violent terms," according to London's Saatchi Gallery.

Ron Athley

The American artist is well known for his masochistic performance art that blurs the distinctions between pleasure and pain. His work has involved self-harming on stage by using needles, spikes and scalpels. "His terrifying self-violence is so compelling that the audience doesn’t cover their eyes from the spectacle, as you might expect, but are transfixed," writes The Independent's Matilda Battersby.

His performances are characterised by his talent for "finding the borderline between horror and desire, harnessing the fear/curiosity paradox and our innate morbidity".