Cosmopolitan Chicken Project: Mechelse Cara Blanca (CCP31) Galería Plaza del Gato, Madrid (ES), 15 October 2026 – 16 January 2027
Koen Vanmechelen presents Cosmopolitan Chicken Project: Mechelse Cara Blanca (CCP31) at Galería Plaza del Gato. Following its predecessor LIMINA: CCP30 at the Chillida Leku Museum in the Basque Country, the journey of the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project continues deeper into Spain.
Launched in 1999, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is one of the world's longest-running living artworks. Each generation crosses the previous one with a breed from another part of the world, building a living metaphor for identity, migration, cultural hybridization, and biocultural diversity. The 30th generation, the Mechelse Euskalduna, was born in 2025 at Chillida Leku from a crossing with the native Euskal Oiloa. In Madrid, this lineage meets the Carablanca Española, one of the Mediterranean's oldest breeds, giving birth to the 31st generation: the Mechelse Cara Blanca.
The exhibition unfolds across the gallery through sculpture, drawing, large-format photography, and multimedia installations. Large-format portraits showcase the latest crossing, making each hybrid bird recognizable through its own plumage and bearing. The works stage hybridity as a practical answer to genetic erosion and as a philosophical position on how species depend on one another.
At the heart of the exhibition stands Under Pressure, an installation that holds the project's history. A glass case of test tubes, each containing feathers from one generation of the Cosmopolitan Chicken, rests on the Genome Book: a comparative DNA analysis of a Cosmopolitan Chicken set against the primal chicken. More than a scientific code, the book is an encyclopaedia of stories. Its ever-growing number of letters traces the widening diversity the CCP continues to bring into being.
"My work is guided by the belief that every organism needs another organism to survive, and that diversity is what allows life to adapt," Vanmechelen reflects. "Everything I make starts from duality. The chickens we know today are cultural constructs, shaped by place, history, and human selection. My art opens up those identities and disrupts their isolation. Through crossing, we create the possibility for something new to emerge. Evolution needs the other."
Madrid stages the artistic manifestation of CCP31. Simultaneously, the living breeding program unfolds at La Nave Va in Berrocalejo, Extremadura, an open-air sculpture park built around a converted sheep barn near the Valdecañas reservoir. Here, eggs from the crossing are incubated, laying the groundwork for a future Planetary Community Chicken project that unites local farmers, universities, researchers, and residents in a shared practice of biodiversity.
Exhibition Facts
COSMOPOLITAN CHICKEN PROJECT: MECHELSE CARA BLANCA (CCP31)
Solo exhibition
Koen Vanmechelen
Galería Plaza del Gato, Calle Noviciado 20, Madrid, Spain
15.10.2026-16.01.2027
More info: plazadelgato.com / lanaveva.com