Exhibitions

The city of Poperinge, inspirator Koen Vanmechelen and the curators of the Watou Arts Festival Edith Doove and Michaël Vandebril give us a first glimpse of Watou 2023. This edition will take place from 1 July to 3 September 2023 and is given /kom.po'zi.ci.o:/ as its baseline. Thirty artists and twenty poets will 'compose' new in situ work. This year, the arts festival furthermore surprises with several new venues, a podcast with Jelle Van Riet and a poetry cycle route with war poems.

Koen Vanmechelen is invited with his artwork ‘Vesta’ for the exhibition ‘Animal Textile’ in the ‘Musée de la Tapisserie et des Arts Textiles de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles’. The central idea behind the expo is the exploration of the theme of the animal by comparing a selection of ancient and modern tapestries of TAMAT’s collection with contemporary works, such as, VESTA, an immense chicken portrait of the artist.

Brihatta Art Foundation and Koen Vanmechelen are excited to announce their upcoming collaboration on the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP) in the fall of 2023. Within the context of this collaboration, Vanmechelen travels to Bangladesh during the last week of March and gives a talk at the University of Dhaka.

Koen Vanmechelen’s work Socrates Temptation is featured in the exhibition ‘IMAGO IUSTITIAE’, at the famous Museo Correr in Piazza San Marco in Venice. The exhibition addresses the theme of the iconography of Justice in art and traverses time. Together with Kendell Geers and Ai Weiwei, Vanmechelen is invited to create a contemporary work of art for this show, in collaboration with Berengo Studio.