Why Bulgarian-born American conceptual artist Christo is making headlines

Who? A Bulgarian-born American conceptual artist.

Ok. what about Christo? Did you know he walked on water?

Whoa! son of God? Well, almost. Last week, he launched The Floating Piers, a temporary walkway, made from more than 2,00,000 interlocking cubes wrapped in yellow nylon.

What’s that? The Floating Piers is a 3 km walkway on Italy’s Lake Iseo, connecting two small islands to each other and to the mainland. The piers are 16 m wide and approximately 35 cm high with sloping sides. Visitors can walk on these floating cubes.

I wonder how that feels like! Christo has warned that the experience will be like walking on water — or on the back of a whale.

Fascinating! Yes. The $16.8 million project was conceived by Christo with Jeanne-Claude, his collaborator and wife, in 1970.

What about his other projects? The most famous one is called ‘Wrapped Reichstag’ where Christo and his wife wrapped the German Parliament in aluminiumcoated polypropylene fabric. Wrapped in the silvery material, the building seemed to move in the wind.

Can i walk on water now? For that, you’ll have to run at about 67 miles per hour to keep yourself from sinking. So unless you are as fast as a cheetah, it’s easy to see why ‘walking on water’ seems more like a fabled miracle.