Koen Vanmechelen (born August 26, 1965 in Sint-Truiden) is a Belgian multi- and transdisciplinary artist who began his career in the early 1990s. Central to his work is the concept of bio-cultural diversity, which he investigates through the domestic chicken and its ancestral species, the red junglefowl or Gallus gallus. The artist's work is an investigation of and an ode to the beautiful diversity and hybridity of life: Every organism needs another organism to survive.