I’ll never forget seeing my first living statue.  It was at an arcade and I was around 13 years old.  It was this greeter type thing that looked like a spaceman and all of us wondered if he was a real person or not.  Sure enough a buddy of mine kicked him in the balls and we found out that he was real.  True story.

After that I hadn’t seen a person pretending to be a statue until college when I saw these folks in New Orleans.  Now they seem to be everywhere.  There are tons in NYC and even more overseas.  So much so that there’s an annual contest celebrating the profession.

The amazing living statues contest takes place every spring in the Ukrainian city of Yevpatoria.  Hundreds of artists come to the event from all over the world to show that they can be still and look like statues.

Highlights of the event after the jump