In 1996 Braco Dimitrijević, interviewed by Jean-Hubert Martin for "Flash Art", said: If you look at the earth from the moon there is virtually no distance between the Louvre and the zoo. There are cages at the zoo just as there are in the Louvre. My ultimate aim is to remove the doors and see the lions at large in the Louvre.

This utopian project, donated to MoRE, is part of that line of research based on the combination between major art exhibitions and live animals, which the artist began to develop in 1981 with the installation Dust of Louvre Mist of Amazon at the Weddington Gallery, where he let two peacocks roam freely through the exhibition of modern art collections. The work that most closely resembles Lion walking freely in the Louvre was realised by Dimitrijević in 1995 for the exhibition at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt. Against historic sense of gravity featured pythons from the Zoo of Cologne set free inside a specially built platform (with a heated pool and an island) containing female portraits dating back between the 16th and 19th century.

As Nena Dimitrijević, art historian and Braco's wife, recalls presenting the project, there’s a tension towards a utopian and unfeasible dimension that characterises his entire career: [Braco Dimitrijević] has managed to achieve many of his projects, that at first seemed impossible, because of his nature and ability to theoretically support his ideas. For example, his use of the façade for the portraits of unknown people encountered a lot of obstacles at the time and opened the chapter regarding the use of urban vocabulary in art.
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