Police in London were shocked when an unconscious woman inside a locked art gallery that they had been called to save was, in fact, not unconscious but a sculpture, Artnet reported.
The incident took place in late November at the Laz Emporium in London. Police had been contacted regarding what was thought to have been a woman unconscious over a desk in the gallery and hadn't moved for two hours, according to SkyNews.
Evidently, this was a case of art being both life-sized and life-like, as law enforcement was unable to distinguish the art piece from a genuine woman in distress without breaking into the locked gallery to investigate.
Credit for the creation of artwork so realistic that it tricked London police officers into storming a local business to save it goes to US artist Mark Jenkins. This piece has been titled Kristina and is made of just packing tape and foam filler, and was commissioned by none other than the Laz Emporium's owner Steve Lazarides, formerly the agent of the famous anonymous graffiti artist Banksy, according to SkyNews.
The sculpture itself is lauded for its ability to tell a story, with the story, in this case, being of Lazarides's sister, according to Artnet, who passed out with her face buried in soup, which was so memorable that he just had to have an art installation made to commemorate it.
"We dropped the full shebang on the poor buggers."
Steve Lazarides
Confused cops confounded by life-like art – again
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Oddly enough, this wasn't the first time the Kristina art installation was deemed to be so mind-bogglingly realistic that it had been deemed an emergency situation.
Back in October 2022, paramedics swarmed the London art and design fair Decorex because they thought the woman had collapsed and did not realize that she was a sculpture, Artnet reported, with police actually criticizing the installation for being too realistic.
As Lazaridies himself noted in an Instagram post back in October, the Kristina exhibit was "polarizing."
"We had one batty old fruit screaming 'I don't like it, I don't like it.' Then other people absolutely loved it and thanked us for bringing a bit of dazzle," Lazarides wrote. "This was the acid test to see whether this ridiculous enterprise has wings. I got to say I've come away with a new resolve. Which is nice. We dropped the full shebang on the poor buggers."