Guerrilla artist still jailed in Russia.

Once upon a contemporary time, an artist made a political statement. Not a big deal in America. Only this artist was Russian and speaking out against the war.

A year ago, artist Aleksandra Skochilenko was arrested for replacing price tags in stores with anti-war slogans and messages. At her arrest hearing, the judge ruled that she was to be jailed until her trial. Two months later, she was given five to ten years.

At the time, her arrest was spreading far more information about the war than her art did. The art only reached shoppers who visited the stores she targeted and then took the time to read the labels on the shelves. Plus, with all the video surveillance in stores these days, Aleksandra must have known she was going to get caught. As a Russian activist, it's a brilliant publicity stunt and a courageous move in the fight for free speech. As a contemporary artist, the act of shop dropping and adding tags to clothing is nothing earth shatteringly new.

Yet her art is now much more than that. It's a performance artwork in which getting arrested is part of the act. That's an effective way to get noticed by the art world. Only the price tag on that attention is much too high here: years of her life, if not her life. That's the one price tag that really needs to change.