About Koen Van Mechelen

The Chicken's Appeal

The Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen (1965) is an internationally renowned, conceptual artist who has presented his work on almost all continents, from the U.S. to China and Iceland to Senegal. He is mostly known for his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project. An artistic-scientific breeding project with chickens which he started in 2000 with the aim to create a truly cosmopolitan chicken that carries the genes of all of the world’s breeds as a metaphor for our multicultural society.

During his talk, Koen Vanmechelen explains his projects thereby introducing the listener to a world characterized by a symbiosis between art, science, philosophy, politics and ethics. A new way of reflecting on existential questions and on contemporary issues that relate to, among others, diversity, globalization, racism, genetic modification and cloning. In 2008, for example, he was invited at the World Economic Forum in Davos to share his perspective on diversity. But he also presented his project and vision at the World Expo in Shanghai, the Biennial of Venice, the Climate Change Congress and the Creativity world Forum.