Limina: Cosmopolitan Chicken Project 30, A Living Threshold Between Art, Nature and Science at Chillida Leku

2025 October 16

• Koen Vanmechelen's first solo exhibition in Spain invites the public to abandon the usual route and venture into lesser-known areas of the museum 
• The Belgian contemporary artist stands out for his innovative approach that blends art, science, nature, community and architecture 
• Part of the Euskadi Mugak/ International Architecture Biennial, the exhibition features a programme of activities such as lectures, guided tours and an Education Lab

 

16/10/2025

Chillida Leku opens Limina: Cosmopolitan Chicken Project 30, the long-term project by artist Koen Vanmechelen. Framed within the Mugak/ International Architecture Biennial of the Basque Country, the Belgians first solo exhibition in Spain strengthens the museum’s commitment to being a living space where nature, art, science, and architecture intersect.

The Mugak/ Biennial, held this year under the theme Castles in the Air, aims to be a cultural platform for reflecting on current global debates. In this context, Limina: Cosmopolitan Chicken Project 30 underscores the importance of biocultural diversity and exchange that lies at the heart of Vanmechelen’s work. Vanmechelen: “The chicken is an architectural construct. It represents the building blocks of life — the genetic structures that merge to create vitality. Architecture, at its essence, must also carry life. 

Through the chicken, I made a deconstruction of what humanity has done: we created a monoculture, stripping away the richness of character. In architecture, that same reduction leads to sterile landscapes. If we want to celebrate beauty, we must return to diversity. That’s what the chicken stands for - a living, decolonised architecture. My work, too, leaves behind the constructed to reconnect with the authentic. The global only exists by the generosity of the local. Celebrate what grows locally and let it evolve into something global.”

Installation view, LIMINA CCP30, Chillida Leku, Hernani (ES), 2025. Koen Vanmechelen. © Alex Abril 

 

Identity, diversity and human rights at Chillida Leku
For 25 years, Vanmechelen has developed a transdisciplinary investigation into biocultural diversity and identity through his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project. An artistic project in which he crossbreeds chicken species from different countries to create a Cosmopolitan bird that carries the genes of breeds from across the globe. “From the beginning, this project was my way of building with biology. Each generation embodies history, geography, and survival, reminding me that diversity is essential for continuity”, he says. “At the core of my practice lies genuine fertility—biological, cultural, creative—born from exchange. It’s a living movement where construction and destruction coexist: a sculpture takes shape by carving stone; a chick by breaking its shell”.

Vanmechelen’s work addresses both timeless and urgent issues surrounding identity, diversity, globalization, and human rights. Like Eduardo Chillida, he reflects on the concept of “the limit” as a place of creation. An idea that resonates with Chillida’s own understanding of identity: “like a tree rooted in its land, but with branches open to the world”.

Now in its 30th iteration, arriving at Chillida Leku, Vanmechelen’s project revisits these questions from a new perspective. This time, the Euskal Oiloa - a native Basque breed - is introduced as the local element. When crossed with the Cosmopolitan Chicken, it triggers a reflection on the tension between the local and the global. In this way, a dialogue unfolds between Chillida and Vanmechelen, with the concept of the threshold at its core.

“Limina transforms Chillida Leku into a threshold—not a border that separates, but a space of transition and transformation. The domestic and the wild, the symbolic and the material, the human and the non-human intersect in a space that destabilizes hierarchies and proposes new forms of coexistence,” explain the exhibition curators, Jon Garbizu and Victoria Collar from Garbizu Collar Architecture, and Gonzalo Peña Sancho from Kri arquitectura.

Eduardo Chillida. Homenaje a Jorge Guillén I, Koen Vanmechelen.T-Rex, LIMINA CCP30, Chillida Leku, Hernani (ES), 2025. © Alex Abril

A peculiar journey through the museum
Along this unconventional route, visitors encounter sculptural interventions that shift perception and invite exploration beyond the museum’s usual paths, into wilder, overgrown areas where art and biodiversity intertwine. “In this new environment, Vanmechelen’s sculptures and interventions act as traces of a future archaeology, opening pathways toward the invisible,” say the curators.

Large-scale pieces punctuate the journey: T-Rex, a six-meter sculpture emerging like a fossilized sign; Instead of Sleeping, where moths gather around fragile light; and Paradise Lost, a pristine egg cradled in a maple tree, evoking origin and potential. In dialogue with Chillida Leku’s landscape and architecture, the works foster a slow-paced experience of discovery, where each element reveals new layers of meaning and awakens a more attentive, sensitive way of seeing the place.

Approaching the farmhouse, visitors encounter a chicken coop attached to the building’s stone façade. To enter, they must pass through it via a door never before opened. This minimalist, narrow tunnel marks a threshold—physical and symbolic—between the wild and the cultural. In this moment the human ceases to be an observer and becomes the object of the chickens’ gaze. The corridor acts as a boundary where the human enters not as a spectator, but as a species, reversing the usual hierarchy and placing the human as the domesticated animal.

Three acts in Zabalaga
Inside the Zabalaga farmhouse, the exhibition unfolds in three acts that narrate a symbolic and biological evolution of the relationship between species and culture. Through the sections Origin, Domestication, and Crossing, the exhibition explores ideas such as biocultural diversity as a catalyst for imagining possible futures, and fertility not just in biological terms but as a capacity for transformation and exchange.

In Origin, where questions arise about the chicken’s ancestry and the moment of its domestication, visitors encounter a video and the sculpture Natural Knowledge, in which the legs of the primal chicken rest on books of knowledge—representing the ancestral shadow behind all crossings.

In Domestication, Vanmechelen presents enlarged portraits of his Cosmopolitan chickens, a giant marble hand cradling a chick, and the installation Breaking the Cage, composed of metal cages with alabaster eggs and incubation lamps embedded in the farmhouse windows—illustrating both the privilege and the penance of domestication.

The final act, Crossing, presents the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project as a manifesto of genetic and cultural diversity. Through sculptures, diagrams, and genetic material, hybridization is revealed as a transformative force and a living structure of interdependence. “Limina is not merely an exhibition to be contemplated. It is a living system to be crossed, inhabited. It asks the visitor to step into a space where humans are no longer masters, but participants; where chickens are no longer invisible, but protagonists. It is an invitation to rethink not only the boundaries between species but the very thresholds of survival”, says Vanmechelen.

Mireia Massagué, director of Chillida Leku, states: “Limina proposes an encounter between sculpture, architecture, and landscape, opening up new interpretations of the space we inhabit. At Chillida Leku, we offer it as an experience to be lived firsthand”.

Through the dialogue between art, science, and architecture, Vanmechelen’s works guide the public through the Zabalaga space in an exhibition that does not seek to provide answers, but rather to pose questions about how we inhabit the world. Limina is not just an exhibition, but an essay that invites us to rethink our place on this planet, to acknowledge that life is relational, and that interspecies exchanges and intensities shape and transform us.

“This dialogue between two seemingly different worlds reminds us of the continued relevance of art as a space for shared construction. Using different languages, both Vanmechelen and Chillida prompt us to reflect on essential questions: human rights, identity, the alliance between science and art, and the need for a more open world”, says Mikel Chillida, Development Director at Chillida Leku.

Limina: Cosmopolitan Chicken Project 30 is supported by the Basque Government’s Department of Housing and Urban Agenda and the Department of Culture of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. Additionally, the contributions of Gonvarri, Loire Gestamp, Izadi Mecanizados, and Arastone have been instrumental in making this project a reality. “At Chillida Leku, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to all the individuals and companies who, through their support and trust, allow us to keep growing, exploring new paths, and pushing boundaries”, emphasizes Mireia Massagué. “Thanks to their generosity, our projects reach new dimensions and open up to new possibilities”.

Installation view, LIMINA CCP30, Chillida Leku, Hernani (ES). Koen Vanmechelen, 2025. © Alex Abril

Public programme and talks
The exhibition will also be accompanied by a public programme that includes workshops, talks, and participatory experiences with an open, interdisciplinary, and collective approach. A highlight will be the talk by Koen Vanmechelen on 17 October, where, alongside curators Victoria Collar, Jon Garbizu, and Gonzalo Peña, he will share processes, questions, and reflections on art, architecture, landscape, and science. The following day, the artist will engage in a conversation with social entrepreneur Chido Govera, in which they will present their work and the positive social change it aims to generate.

In addition, under the Mugak/ programme and the title INTERSPECIES, two events will take place that “invite us to rethink architecture beyond buildings, as a field for interspecies experimentation where care and cooperation are not utopias but essential conditions for the future”, say the curators. On 25 October, a discussion between architect Elli Mosayebi and artist Marcus Coates, moderated by architect Mariana Pestana, will explore new models of connection based on empathy and trust. On 26 October, Fernando Cremades will lead a workshop and a performance. In short, the museum reaffirms itself as a living space for exploring possible futures through the interaction of art, landscape, and thought.

Guided visits, workshops, and Education Lab
To complement the activities related to the Mugak/ Biennial, Chillida Leku’s education team has organised a comprehensive programme of guided tours, workshops, and events around the exhibition. Highlights include a guided conversation with Nausica Sánchez, Head of Education at the museum, and a talk by biologists Beatriz Díaz and Alberto Castro. Visitors will also be able to take part in a movement and meditation workshop, and families will be invited to enjoy activities such as a children’s art workshop by the Maushaus team and a scientific illustration workshop. As usual, Chillida Leku will also offer guided visits for teachers and students across various educational levels.

In connection with the exhibition, Chillida Leku also launches its third Education Lab, a collaborative learning project that has already taken shape through a series of workshops and design sessions with students from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country (EHU) and the École Supérieure d’Art Pays Basque (Bayonne). The students designed a “passport”, a playful guide combining a map and creative exercises, encouraging visitors to move through Limina as co-explorers. Each stop along the route proposes small acts of observation, drawing, or reflection that connect art, science, and the living environment.

The Education Lab will be activated in collaboration with the Asociación Navarra Nuevo Futuro, which works with young people in vulnerable situations and with fewer opportunities for access to culture. Guided by the museum’s education team, the students will create a mediation project around the exhibition that encourages reflection, critical thinking, participation, and meaningful learning through art.

This project is made possible thanks to support from the EGTC Euroregion Nouvelle-Aquitaine – Euskadi – Navarra and fosters mobility and dialogue among young people from different cultural backgrounds in the region.

Exhibition Catalogue
On the occasion of Limina: Cosmopolitan Chicken Project 30, a catalogue will be published by Turner Libros, featuring texts by Mireia Massagué, Director of Chillida Leku; Mikel Chillida, on behalf of the Eduardo Chillida–Pilar Belzunce Foundation; curators Jon Garbizu, Victoria Collar, and Gonzalo Peña; a scientific perspective by architect and researcher Mariana Pestana; and a text by artist Koen Vanmechelen on his work.

The 112-page catalogue will include large-format photographs of the exhibition, showing the works installed in dialogue with the architecture of the farmhouse.