The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project / Ten generations

Since approximately 10 years Koen Vanmechelen is
mainly engaged in his gigantic chicken breeding project
The Cosmopolitan Chicken. In this solo-exhibition, his
fourth at Deweer Art Gallery, he made an overview of the
whole project since its beginnings and combined it with a
live presentation of the last, recently born generation.
The Cosmopolitan Chicken is a worldwide breeding
project to which the crossbreeding of different national
chicken races is central and crucial. The crossbreeding is
the metaphorical quintessence of the dynamic, fertile and
creative life and of the peaceful living together of different
species and races.
The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project officially started in
2000 in Watou (BE). As his participation in the exhibition
Storm Centers, curated by Jan Hoet, Koen Vanmechelen
crossbred the Belgian chicken Mechelse Koekoek
(Cuckoo of Malines) with the French pride Poulet de
Bresse, creating a second generation, the Mechelse
Bresse.
And Vanmechelen went on. Until now, The Cosmopolitan
Chicken Project has produced ten generations. The
descendants of each crossing are named after the first
generation and the new race that is brought in. For
example the eighth generation, the ‘Mechelse Fighters’,
was crossbred with the Brazilian Auracana to create the
nineth generation called ‘Mechelse Auracana’. Recently,
Koen Vanmechelen has crossbred the Mechelse
Auracana with a Turkish chicken called the Denizli
longcrower.
The resulting generation, the Mechelse Denizli, is on
display in this exhibition. The first animal that reaches
adulthood will be portrayed and when it has died a
natural death it will be stuffed to testify of it’s new
generation, all of which was also the case with its
predecessors.
The Cosmopolitan Chicken is an artistic and aesthetic
project that not only touches a lot of contemporary
social issues such as genetic manipulation, cloning,
globalisation, multiraciality, multicultural society, and so
on, but also tries to influence the debate on these themes
from an artistic and humanitarian point of view. Although
the artist has a lot of inspiring contacts with the medical
and scientific world, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project
has found its ideal setting in the art world.