We Thought We Were Alone unfolds across three floors of the historic Venetian palazzo. Sculpture, glass, marble, photography, video, and living systems form a continuous landscape of encounter between species, cultures, and ways of knowing.
Here, classical forms are not preserved but transformed. The exhibition invites visitors into a space where difference generates relation, and where coexistence becomes a creative force.
Koen Vanmechelen returns to Venice for his first sculptural solo exhibition
About the exhibition
We Thought We Were Alone departs from a simple but urgent premise: life does not exist in isolation. Human, animal, and environment form a shared system of mutual dependence.
Across the exhibition, hybridity emerges as both method and message. Through crossbreeding, transformation, and collaboration, Vanmechelen’s work challenges fixed identities and proposes diversity as a condition for resilience.
Biology meets culture. Genome meets monument. The works function as living propositions suggesting that the future is not singular, but relational.
A central moment within the exhibition is the Wild Gene Festival, created in collaboration with Youssou N’Dour, where sound, ritual, and collective voice extend the project beyond form into shared experience.
In dialogue with In Minor Keys
Presented during the 61st International Art Exhibition, the project resonates with the Biennale’s theme In Minor Keys.
Rather than spectacle, the exhibition embraces attentiveness to fragility, interdependence, and quiet transformation. It proposes relation over dominance, reciprocity over control.
In this context, hybridity is not conflict but composition: a polyphony of forms, lives, and perspectives shaping a shared planetary condition.
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"Nature does not need our pity, only our willingness to coexist. The minor key of survival is not conquest, but reciprocity and hybridity." - Koen Vanmechelen
Artist Statement
Koen Vanmechelen is internationally known for his long-term research into biodiversity, identity, and cross-cultural exchange. His work brings together art, science, and community through projects that explore the relationship between genetics and society.
Rooted in his Cosmopolitan Renaissance vision, his practice positions hybridity as a catalyst for social understanding and planetary awareness.
Curator Statement
James Putnam is an independent curator and writer whose work explores dialogues between contemporary art and historical context. Formerly of the British Museum, he has curated internationally across museums and heritage sites, developing exhibitions that connect material culture with present-day questions.
For We Thought We Were Alone, Putnam frames the exhibition as an environment of relation where artistic form and ecological thought converge.