For Koen Vanmechelen, Venice has never simply been a destination—it has long functioned as a place of return, reflection, and reinvention. Opened during the 61st Venice Biennale, his exhibition “We Thought We Were Alone” transforms the historic Palazzo Rota Ivancich into an immersive environment where sculpture, ecology, science, and philosophy collide. Spread across three floors of the atmospheric palazzo, the exhibition features forty new works created specifically for the space, unfolding as a meditation on coexistence, hybridity, and the fragile relationship between humanity and the natural world.
That tension between order and chaos, permanence and transformation, defines Vanmechelen’s larger practice. For decades, the Belgian artist has explored ideas of identity, diversity, and cross-cultural exchange through works that merge art with biology, community, and research. Venice, with its layered history and centuries of cultural exchange, has become central to that thinking. The city’s unique geography—isolated yet globally connected—mirrors the “hybrid environment” the artist continually seeks in his work.
Those ideas are embodied most fully at LABIOMISTA, Vanmechelen’s extraordinary studio and cultural park in Genk, Belgium. Built on the grounds of a former coal mine and zoo, the evolving site combines architecture, animal habitats, workshops, installations, and scientific experimentation into what the artist describes as a constantly shifting ecosystem. Designed in collaboration with architect Mario Botta, LABIOMISTA functions as both laboratory and living artwork, housing Vanmechelen’s studios alongside open-air installations and living works tied to his long-running Cosmopolitan Chicken Project. More than a studio, it is an active meeting place where culture and nature, people and animals, local histories and global ideas continuously intersect—an ethos that carries directly into “We Thought We Were Alone.”
Koen Vanmechelen on Returning to Venice
Koen Vanmechelen, Installation View of “We Thought We Were Alone,” 2026. Image copyright Francesco Allegretto.
WHITEWALL: You’ve been coming back to Venice for decades. What keeps bringing you here?
KOEN VANMECHELEN: To ground yourself for me as being an artist, I need to come back to Venice. If you’re in paradise, there are two possibilities. Or you stay in paradise, but then you kill yourself because there is no fertilizer. Or you escape from paradise, but you step into the pain of being. You give yourself to the temptation of curiosity.
This is actually, in my opinion, the movement that an artist has to make. But to understand that, you have to come back to paradise. If I want to refresh my fur, I have to come back to paradise to understand where I’m at. This show really gave me the insight into what I’m telling now.
I believe art is a comment on society. Criticism belongs more to politics because it’s reacting to a moment. Art respects the speed of evolution. That’s a completely different term, and I think that’s why I keep coming back.
“I believe art is a comment on society….Art respects the speed of evolution,”
-Koen Vanmechelen.
WW: Venice feels very connected to the ideas in “We Thought We Were Alone.” Did the city itself shape the exhibition?
KV: Venice is an incubator because it’s an environment surrounded by water. You cannot escape, but at the same time, you have the influence of so many cultures. This is the hybrid environment that I need.
I’m always coming back to incubate myself. This is how the Renaissance was born, actually. You need the right temperature with the right people at the right moment; otherwise, you die. You need to hatch every time again.
That’s why I made the walking egg. Life is fragile, but you need strong legs to run over the world. So I made an egg with iron legs. You’re looking for 37.6 degrees Celsius to come out—that is exactly the temperature you need to get hatched. In life, you need to hatch every time again.
On Coexistence and Creation
Koen Vanmechelen, Installation View of “We Thought We Were Alone,” 2026. Image copyright Francesco Allegretto.
WW: The title “We Thought We Were Alone” feels very philosophical, but also very current.
KV: We thought we were alone. Think about it. We are not alone. I need you. You need me. This is the energy.
I’m a very optimistic man for the future, but we have to take a step and understand that. We lost the real thing of domestication. We start to abuse instead of coexisting.
I believe in the wild gene. The wild gene gives me the creativity of existence, the curiosity to know the other. Because the other is recognizing you and giving you existence.
I’m not in the making industry. I’m in the creating industry. That’s something totally different.
“Art belongs to humanity,”
-Koen Vanmechelen.
WW: Your work moves between sculpture, science, philosophy, and public engagement. Do you see all of it as one ecosystem?
KV: I cannot detach the artwork from the world. Art belongs to humanity, but also to order and disorder, to chaos and order. Too much order leads to war. Too much chaos, the same thing. The balance in between—that is art for me.
We are storytellers. In storytelling, you have jokers and serious tellers. I think in art we are serious storytellers—with a little humor. To relativize things is one of the surviving strategies. Otherwise, you stay in this tormented soul. The torment comes before the art. The art comes in the liberation from the torment.
Building LABIOMISTA
Koen Vanmechelen, Installation View of “We Thought We Were Alone,” 2026. Image copyright Francesco Allegretto.
WW: Your studio, LABIOMISTA, feels much bigger than a traditional studio. How did that project begin?
KV: LABIOMISTA is the same spiritual trip. When you start as an artist, you don’t know where it’s going, but later you understand.
My old studio was in a factory, and suddenly they told me it would be demolished. Then I met the mayor of Genk by accident. He said, “We have a place nobody wants—the former zoo.” I said, “Okay.”
When I saw the space, I knew immediately. It was in the poorest area of the city, with many communities, but my work is about communities as well. I said, “This is the place. Let’s start.”
Then I called Mario Botta because I already had a whole vision in my head. He came to see the site, and there was this ruined villa on the property. He said, “If I can open the door, we do the project.” Nobody had been able to open it. He took the keys. Click. The door opened immediately.
We had four witnesses. This is not a joke. It’s not magic—it’s energy. Things come together when they have to come together. I couldn’t have done LABIOMISTA ten years earlier. I could only do it at that moment.
Material, Energy, and Nature
Koen Vanmechelen, Installation View of “We Thought We Were Alone,” 2026. Image copyright Francesco Allegretto.
WW: The works in Venice feel monumental, but also strangely light.
KV: I’m happy you say that because even the chandelier has feathers. There’s a lightness in the show, even with marble and bronze.
The element of nature is always playing in it. Einstein said energy is mass. That’s why the egg is also energy and mass. The chicken and the egg come at the same time. The stones are breathing energy and shaping a form that carries that further. And the materials decide many things. I don’t arrive with one fixed vision. I work with coincidence. Coincidence makes the art.
“Coincidence makes the art,”
-Koen Vanmechelen.
WW: There’s also a strong emotional relationship to animals throughout the exhibition.
KV: The cheetah installation is about that. The cheetah says, “No way. You’re not going to wear me. I exist.” I observed cheetahs in the wild many times. It hurts me when animals become objects. So the cheetah is there saying, “Be careful. I’m also here.”
The Drive to Create
Koen Vanmechelen, Installation View of “We Thought We Were Alone,” 2026. Image copyright Francesco Allegretto.
WW: You’re constantly working on multiple projects at once. How do you balance that intensity?
KV: I’m always working on ten shows. The studio is never free. It’s the hardest thing because all the time my brain is knocking to create. My wife says it’s not easy to be a unicorn. It’s a kind of addiction to creation because you think you have to say something to the world. Every morning you wake up and think, “We have to do this, this, this.”
But then comes the real question: Who’s waiting for you? I think the biggest present of this exhibition is that you have something to think about. That is what we as artists can give to the world. Even if someone buys a sculpture, what matters is that they leave with something to think about. That is the beauty of art. We leave it open to the viewer.
