The Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen has created a strange and spectacular art park on the site of an abandoned coal mine on the edge of Genk. It reopened earlier this month with a new exhibition titled Movement.
After the mine closed down, most of the buildings were demolished. Someone opened a cafe on the site with a caged lion in the garden. It grew into a private zoo with more than 1,000 animals. But the zoo was badly run and had to close in 1998. The Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, known for his Cosmopolitan Chicken breeding project, took over the abandoned wilderness to create an experimental laboratory called Labiomista.
He commissioned the Italian architect Mario Botto to design a bold black entrance pavilion known as the Ark. It leads to the former director’s villa where Vanmechelen now displays art that reflects his obsessive interest in identity, reproduction and deversity.
The site includes a vast greenhouse along with a wild zone where Vanmechelen breeds llamas, ostriches, zebras and dromedaries. His aim is to create what he calls a ‘Cosmopolitan Renaissance’ by showing the way all living creatures are connected.
In a field across the street, Vanmechelen has developed another project called Nomadland. Here he has created a temporary settlement made up of tents, wooden stages and painted caravans. The site is quiet during the week, but it gets lively on summer weekends when organic and sustainable food is served while tame dromedaries and other animals wander around.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
