For some, it’s the symbol of New York. For Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, instead, the Empire State Building became the perfect canvas for their latest performance.
Yesterday the world’s most famous rooftopping duo reached the spire of the iconic skyscraper, well beyond the highest point accessible to the public. At over 440 meters, they unfurled a banner reading “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace,” a quote commonly attributed to Jimi Hendrix, though its origin is still debated, with some tracing it back to British statesman William Ewart Gladstone.
For a few minutes, the Manhattan skyline became the backdrop for a universal message. The skyline, the architecture, and their bodies gave life to a performance suspended between urban art, photography, and symbolic gesture, transforming one of the world’s most iconic buildings into an ephemeral work.
Then came the most unexpected moment.
Right at the tip of the Empire State Building, Ivan Beerkus got down on one knee and asked Angela Nikolau to marry him. She said yes, suspended between the sky and New York. Shortly after, the couple was stopped and arrested by authorities for accessing an unauthorized area of the skyscraper.
For those who know their work, though, this marriage proposal isn’t a simple plot twist. It’s the natural continuation of a body of work that has spent years weaving together love, photography, and performance.
Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus have built their visual world by scaling some of the most spectacular architecture on the planet, turning every summit into a stage where the body enters into dialogue with the urban landscape. Their images don’t just capture vertigo, they construct an aesthetic in which risk becomes a visual language and architecture stops being merely a space to pass through, becoming instead a place to reinterpret.
Even the choice of phrase adds another layer of meaning. In a place that has represented power, ambition, and the American dream for nearly a century, Angela and Ivan chose to leave a message that flips that narrative, putting love at the center. And moments later, they turned it into a concrete gesture, promising each other a future together.
For a few minutes, the Empire State Building wasn’t just one of the most photographed monuments on the planet. It became the stage for a work destined to live on mainly through images: a performance that unites risk, romance, and the evocative power of urban space, reminding us that art can sometimes emerge exactly where no one would expect to find it.
Article by Alice Trapletti
