page_title: Koen Vanmechelen
section_title: LABIOMISTA
hierarchical_section_title: Koen Vanmechelen / Foundations / LABIOMISTA
caption_attribution_description: English: LABIOMISTA, the battery, studio Koen Vanmechelen
context_page_description: Koen Vanmechelen is an internationally acclaimed Belgian multi- and transdisciplinary artist who began his career in the early 1990s. He is one of the most prolific and prominent contemporary artists in Belgium. His ground-breaking work deals with biocultural diversity and identity. Central to his oeuvre is the chicken, which, through his projects, is revealed as both an artwork and a metaphor for society. By bringing together and exploring the interplay between art, science and philosophy in his work, Vanmechelen reflects upon our global heritage and examines the way that we choose to live and evolve. Multi-disciplinary scientific collaborations and community engagement are integral to Vanmechelen's approach.
  Vanmechelen's work first gained worldwide recognition in the late nineties, with the launch of his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, an artistic crossbreeding project with chickens. Since its inception nearly twenty years ago, the resulting art work has been shown in exhibitions all over the world. It has also attracted growing interest amongst scientists.
context_section_description: LABIOMISTA, literally 'mix of life', is in itself an all-encompassing art project, set up as a model for the philosophical ideas on which Vanmechelen's work is based.  LABIOMISTA hosts Vanmechelen's first Open University of Diversity and related foundations.  The site is also where the artist's animals live and breed.  It is both a laboratory and a library of biocultural diversity. 
  "This is a place that has both the physical and mental space needed for biological and cultural diversity to flourish. Its position between the domesticated and the wild helps bring new fertility to the neighbourhood, which in turn will spread to other parts of the city.  LABIOMISTA will show how various cultures can come into contact, and how humans, flora and fauna can co-exist in enriching ways that have perhaps been forgotten.  My work at LABIOMISTA navigates between and across disciplines, positioning diversity as the foundation for sustainable living and offering up an alternative to traditionally monolithic, mono-cultural approaches to development." - Koen Vanmechelen
  With support from local government as well as private stakeholders, and in collaboration with Flanders and Limburg Tourism, LABIOMISTA is being developed as a public-private partnership between Vanmechelen and the city of Genk. The 24 hectare site will be open to the public summer of 2019.  It consists of three parts: a villa, park and studio designed by influential Swiss architect Mario Botta, each one representing a different identity: humans, nature, and the interplay and tension between them.  As visitors enter this world, a pair of stellar sea-eagles look down upon them from their cage above the studio, while the red jungle fowls, the source of all domesticated chicken life, continue to forage just meters away.  A new exploration between man and nature begins. It is a search for a new, more sustainable balance.
caption: LABIOMISTA, the battery, studio Koen Vanmechelen
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