In the spring of 2017, French performance artist Abraham Poincheval pushed the boundaries of art and endurance by turning himself into a human incubator. For 23 days, from late March to April, he lived inside a glass vivarium at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum, using only his body heat to hatch chicken eggs. Titled Oeuf (French for “Egg”), this performance was as provocative as it was profound, sparking debates about art, life, and the ethics of involving living creatures in creative expression.
A Human Hen in a Glass Cage
Poincheval’s setup was both simple and extreme. He sat on a specially designed chair with a container beneath it holding ten fertilized chicken eggs. Wrapped in a thick, insulating blanket crafted by Korean artist Seulgi Lee, he maintained a temperature of at least 37°C (98.6°F) to mimic the conditions a hen would provide. To boost his body heat, he consumed “warming” foods like ginger and took just one 30-minute break each day for meals and minimal movement. A box beneath the chair served as a makeshift toilet, ensuring he never fully abandoned his delicate charges.
For 23 days, Poincheval barely slept, sitting upright in the glass enclosure under the gaze of museum visitors. His commitment paid off: nine of the ten eggs hatched, with the first chick emerging on April 18, 2017. The chicks—eight yellow and one brown—were later sent to a farm in Normandy, where Poincheval’s father, Christian, an inventor known for quirky creations like rose-scented flatulence pills, had prepared a “luxury chicken coop” to ensure their well-being. Christian assured the public that the chicks would live out their natural lives, never destined for a dinner plate.
Art, Metamorphosis, and Controversy
Poincheval described Oeuf as an exploration of “metamorphosis and gender,” reflecting on the act of a male figure nurturing life in a traditionally maternal role. He drew inspiration from Guy de Maupassant’s short story Toine, in which a paralyzed farmer is forced by his wife to hatch eggs with his body heat. For Poincheval, the performance was a meditation on life cycles, aligning the 21-to-26-day incubation period with human rhythms, such as a woman’s menstrual cycle.
Yet the project wasn’t without critics. Animal rights group PETA condemned Poincheval for depriving the chicks of a natural mother, arguing that the performance prioritized art over animal welfare. Scientists, like R. Michael Hulet from Penn State University, warned that human body temperature (around 98.6°F) is lower than the ideal 100°F needed for healthy chick development, potentially risking abnormal growth or death. Despite these concerns, the successful hatching of nine chicks defied expectations, though it didn’t silence ethical debates.
A Career of Extreme Immersion
Oeuf was far from Poincheval’s first foray into extreme performance art. Just a month earlier, he spent a week entombed inside a limestone rock at the Palais de Tokyo, an experience he called a “mind-altering trip.” In 2014, he lived for two weeks inside a hollowed-out taxidermied bear, eating worms and beetles to emulate its diet. Other feats include spending a week atop a 20-meter pole outside Paris’s Gare du Nord, navigating the Rhône River in a giant corked bottle, and walking across France in a straight line using only a compass. Each performance pushes physical and mental limits, embodying Poincheval’s philosophy that the best way to understand objects or beings is to “enter” them.
A Meditation on Life and Art
Oeuf was more than a stunt—it was a bold exploration of human-animal connection, endurance, and the blurred lines between art and life. Poincheval’s 23 days in the vivarium, exposed to public scrutiny while nurturing fragile embryos, challenged viewers to consider the cycles of creation and the sacrifices they demand. The sight of chicks emerging from beneath his chair was a powerful symbol of life’s persistence, even in the most unconventional circumstances.
As Poincheval himself dreams of one day “walking on the clouds,” his work continues to stretch the boundaries of what art can be. Oeuf remains a striking chapter in his career, a moment when a man became a hen, and a museum became a birthplace. Whether you see it as genius or provocation, Poincheval’s performance invites us to rethink our place in the natural world and the lengths we’ll go to understand it.
