We Thought We Were Alone

During the 2026 Venice Biennale, Belgian artist and thinker Koen Vanmechelen returned to the city with We Thought We Were Alone, a solo exhibition in the historic Palazzo Rota Ivancich. His work moves through the questions that have driven his practice for decades: what it means to be human in a world shared with other species, what diversity costs when it disappears, and what remains when the cages we build - for animals, for nature, for each other - are finally opened.

This book documents the exhibition and the thinking behind it, and includes essays by prominent voices such as cosmologist Thomas Hertog, human rights expert Manfred Nowak and evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen.

'Decades ago Venice shaped me as an artist. I felt the paradox of an island that looks like paradise but behaves like a laboratory. You can stay and be seduced by the surface, or you can break through it and discover what Venice is really made of: exchange, crossings, contamination.'
- Koen Vanmechelen