Performance artist Kerry Skarbakka wanted to recreate the 9/11 tragedy, jumping more than 30 times from the five-story Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday. Dressed in a business suit and safety harnesses he felt repeatedly, to create photographs that recall scenes from the World Trade Center attack.

He declared he got the idea after watching on TV how people jumped to their deaths from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, he says he sees falling as a metaphor for life.

"Mentally, physically and emotionally, from day to day, we fall. Even walking is falling: You take a step, fall and catch yourself," he said.

But not everyone agreed with the show. Victim's friends and relatives were shocked. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called it "nauseatingly offensive".

"What kind of a sick individual is he? Tell him to go jump off the Empire State Building and see how it feels," Rosemarie Giallombardo, whose son Paul Salvio died in the terrorist attack, told the (New York) Daily News. "He's an artist? Go paint a bowl of fruit or something", reports Associated Press