As someone who has traveled to various arty places in Ireland, Italy, London, and America, I have witnessed performance artists pretend as if they were statues.  Italy I understood because of all sculpture there gives an opportunity to play between these two ideas.  One non sentient object created to imitate living humans (Actually, more like gods and abstracts) while the human acts as though it came from non sentient material.  For the human, it represents a test of endurance and playfully tricking people who see them.