VENICE.- Renowned Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen presents his first solo sculptural exhibition in Venice, We Thought We Were Alone, at Palazzo Rota Ivancich, coinciding with the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, running from the 9 May - 22 November 2026. The exhibition, curated by the UK independent curator and writer James Putnam, will feature 40 new sculptures and installations, created specifically for the exhibition. Moving beyond human-centred perspectives, it will explore the dynamic relationship between living organisms and the inorganic environment.

Spanning the three floors of the Palazzoʼs history-marked, transient structure, the exhibition is a space of sanctuary located in Veniceʼs Castello district near San Marco. Visitors are immersed in the key themes that define Koen Vanmechelenʼs practice - crossbreeding, hybridity, and identity - shaped by his vision of a Cosmopolitan Renaissance. Moving beyond traditional sculpture, the exhibition positions art as a positive force capable of inspiring social and biological transformation. Palazzo Rota Ivancich not only functions as a backdrop but as a structural part of the exhibition: a layered interior where rooms become thresholds, with the buildingʼs own history of repair and reinvention echoing the showʼs central theme, reflecting further the interconnectedness of human beings and nature. Moving across three floors, the visitor experiences the palazzo as a ‘cocoonʼ - a space where forms loosen, reconfigure, and return changed.

Materials including bronze, marble, glass, photography, and video are brought together to create a dialogue between past and future, a tension between the individual and the collective, matter and form, inheritance and transformation. Classical statuary is reinterpreted amid a diverse menagerie of animal forms, while the works interconnect biology and culture, the local and the global, solitude and solidarity.

Koen Vanmechelen says: “For centuries we thought we were alone. We imagined ourselves at the centre of all things - the measure of progress, the author of peace, the keeper of paradise and the pinnacle of evolution. As the exhibition unfolds the animals reveal themselves, not as metaphors or relics, but as messengers of a different truth. In their gaze, we confront the price of our domestication - how we tamed the world and, in doing so, lost our own wildness. This is not nostalgia for a lost Eden, but a confrontation with the limits of human exceptionalism. Nature does not need our pity, only our willingness to coexist. The minor key of survival is not conquest, but reciprocity and hybridity.ˮ

We Thought We Were Alone marks a significant evolution in the conceptual practice of Vanmechelen. The works begin with reinterpretations of classical sculptures such as Medusa and The Three Graces, but move beyond these references to focus on how artworks are shaped through relationships and collaboration. Rather than existing as isolated objects, the works take form through networks of human, animal, and ecological connections, with community playing a central role in how meaning is created. By bringing together diverse elements, the project challenges established boundaries while encouraging dialogue and social understanding, placing human life within the wider, interconnected systems of global ecosystems and sustainability.

Koen Vanmechelenʼs interdisciplinary practice continually expands the boundaries between artistic expression, scientific inquiry and community engagement. The exhibition extends his long-term work, including the ‘Cosmopolitan Chicken Projectʼ, a global and transdisciplinary exploration of biocultural diversity and identity through the interplay of art and science, as well as his ongoing work at LABIOMISTA. This 24-hectare cultural park in Belgium functions as a breeding ground for community-driven projects, engaging local neighbourhoods while maintaining an international outlook. Each year, LABIOMISTA develops its programme around a central theme, and in its eighth season, titled Never Alone, it foregrounds ideas of collective interconnectedness.

In dialogue with the Venice Biennale theme, In Minor Keys, the exhibition features a dedicated room exploring Wild Gene Festival, a collaborative project between Koen Vanmechelen and celebrated Senegalese musician Youssou NʼDour. Originally staged on 1 August 2025 at LABIOMISTA, the festival transformed the site into an open-air stage, delivering a co-performance of live music played by Youssou NʼDour and Le Super Étoile de Dakar, which intertwined with Vanmechelen painting a monumental nine-metre canvas in real time. At the Palazzo, the room presents two videos highlighting the community that brought the festival to life, creating a shared space of music, ritual, and collective creativity.

Youssou NʼDour says: “The Wild Gene Festival installation in Venice transforms the Palazzo into a place where art and music combine, inviting visitors to experience and celebrate the rhythms of creativity and connection through this sonic architecture, bringing sound, gesture, and colour together to reflect identity, community, and the living dialogue between humans and nature.ˮ

Curator James Putnam says: “Vanmechelen doesnʼt illustrate the idea of interconnected life, instead he engineers conditions in which it becomes visibly unveiled. By staging hybrids, thresholds and fragile systems across the palazzo, he turns a familiar premise into a physical experience: a continuous negotiation between form and transformation.ˮ