Angela Nikolau, the Woman Who Climbed the Empire State Building, Is an Artist

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 “neo-artist working with extreme performance, visual art and projects with global reach.”

“I create high-impact cultural moments, extreme performances and visual content that brands want to be part of,” she writes.

The 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. She has also made NFTs featuring images of her daredevil actions and sold them on the SuperRare platform.

In that Netflix documentary, Beerkus described his and Nikolau’s practice as such: “We’re just artists filming the city from up high.”

On 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: “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace.”

According to the New York Times, Nikolau was charged with burglary, which includes unlawfully entering a building in New York City.

Nikolau and Beerkus’s action vaguely recalls a similar one performed by Philippe Petit in 1974, when he walked between the World Trade Center’s towers via a tightrope. Like Nikolau, Petit considers himself an artist. Also like Nikolau, he is the subject of a documentary: 2008’s Man on Wire.