Medusa's Hope

Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, and Zimbabwean social entrepreneur Chido Govera are passionate about mainstreaming biocultural diversity to build resilience and improve the conditions necessary for individuals and communities to thrive and reach their full potential. Deeply embedded in their work is their commitment to give a voice and a livelihood to the most vulnerable of the communities where they work, with particular focus on women and girls. Empowerment of communities is the foundation of their joint initiatives. Art and food are their enablers and shape their platform. Their unique collaboration allows them to rebel against traditional monistic classifications and create something uniquely different. Sanctuaries for creation and reinvention that help envision solutions, improve connectivity and be a proxy for risk-taking experiments that would ordinarily be impossible within the usual frameworks of science and industry.

In Medusa's Hope, Koen and Chido plead for transforming the lessons of nature and humanity into a new kind of architecture. With the human-animal as part of the architecture of nature. They present Koen Vanmechelen's iconic Medusa statue as an example of the needed paradigm shift. Vanmechelen's Medusa is a woman's head covered by snakes and chickens. Medusa represents the unpredictability of things, the quintessence of evolution, inspiring life or turning it into stone. Protection and demise, Medusa’s snakehead is the dichotomy that underlies the fundaments of Vanmechelen's oeuvre and Govera's work. The chickens of Vanmechelen's Medusa refer to evolution. But make no mistake, we should remain vigilant. At the same time as snakes can kill, chickens' overbreeding has created new lethal diseases. Danger always lurks in what is known to us. The only way is to look into Medusa's eyes, accept the new perspective, and transform. We have to be gentle with our ecosystem. We must listen to nature, a living library of knowledge, and discover what place we can take in its diverse network.