The primary focus of Koen Vanmechelen's art is crossbreeding and biodiversity. Best known is his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP); a global interbreeding project involving chicken species from different nationalities as a symbol of global diversity. The same examination of the ideas on diversity and identity can be found is his projects with pigs (LUCY), camelids and mushrooms (MECC), cows (SOTWA) and in the Planetary Community Chicken (PCC) project, a crossing between the Cosmopolitan chicken and the local commercial chicken to create a robust community chicken for the world.
Vanmechelen's projects start from the idea of duality, from a meeting with ‘the other’, leading to genetic diversification and evolution. The artist calls on us to reach across the borders to think, to come into contact with other cultures, and above all to have mutual respect.

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