[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2283644372.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tDetails may still be coming into focus about the couple who climbed the Empire State Building on Wednesday, but here is one thing for certain: Angela Nikolau, the woman who ascended the skyscraper alongside her partner Ivan Beerkus, is an artist.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn her website, Nikolau terms herself a \u201cneo-artist working with extreme performance, visual art and projects with global reach.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI create high-impact cultural moments, extreme performances and visual content that brands want to be part of,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe exact nature of her art is a little unclear, but it seems as though her practice involves climbing tall buildings as a performance-like gesture. Her previous efforts to do just that became the subject of a Netflix documentary called Skywalkers: A Love Story<\/em>. She has also made NFTs featuring images of her daredevil actions and sold them on the SuperRare platform.<\/p>\n \n\tIn that Netflix documentary, Beerkus described his and Nikolau\u2019s practice as such: \u201cWe\u2019re just artists filming the city from up high.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOn July 1, Nikolau and Beerkus climbed to the top of the Empire State Building, a stunt that gained attention in part because Nikolau posted about it to her Instagram as she did so. Once they reached their destination, Beerkus proposed to Nikolau, and a banner was unfurled. It read: \u201cWhen the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to the New York Times<\/em>, Nikolau was charged with burglary, which includes unlawfully entering a building in New York City.<\/p>\n \n\tNikolau and Beerkus\u2019s action vaguely recalls a similar one performed by Philippe Petit in 1974, when he walked between the World Trade Center\u2019s towers via a tightrope. Like Nikolau, Petit considers himself an artist. Also like Nikolau, he is the subject of a documentary: 2008\u2019s Man on Wire<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/angela-nikolau-empire-state-building-artist-1234791002\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2283644372.jpg?w=1024″] Details may still be coming into focus about the couple who climbed the Empire State Building on Wednesday, but here is one thing for certain: Angela Nikolau, the woman who ascended the skyscraper alongside her partner Ivan Beerkus, is an artist. On her website, Nikolau terms herself a \u201cneo-artist working with extreme […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2024583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2024583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2024583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2024583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2024583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}