SEEING FOREST

SINGAPORE PAVILION, 60TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2024

curated by Haeju Kim

Artist: Robert Zhao Renhui

Commissioned by Low Eng Teong, National Arts Council – Singapore

Local Coordination in Venice

 

 

In Seeing Forest, Singaporean artist Robert Zhao offers an evocative exploration of secondary forests – forests regrown from deforested land due
to human intervention such as development and plantation. Often taken over by invasive plant and animal species introduced to Singapore in the 19th century, these thresholds between primary forest and developed areas offer insights into a complex web of human and non-human co-existence.

The observation of the ultimately unknowable in the natural world is a hallmark of artist Robert Zhao Renhui’s praxis.

Since 1998, under the auspices of his own semi-fictional Institute of Critical Zoologists, Zhao’s many and varied projects have served as lenses that highlight the resilience of nature and the various interactions that occur when such resilience overlaps with human life and society.

Notably, over the last seven years, he has been focusing on secondary forests in Singapore and the new ecosystems that have developed within it.

For the Singapore Pavilion, decades of Zhao’s accumulated observations are condensed and organised into an intensive installation that complements the scale and condition of the Singapore Pavilion in Arsenale.

Through this exhibition, we see how the island of Singapore has evolved to arrive at the present day, revealing some of the ways in which human urban design can shape the natural world itself, resulting in an ecosystem of migrant species that echoes the trajectories and makeup of the city’s human population. At the same time, Seeing Forest also highlights phenomena that are universally relatable to those living in any urban environment.

[Website: singaporeartmuseum.sg/Venice-Biennale-2024 ]

 

 

Previous collaborations between M+B Studio and the Singapore Pavilion: Biennale Architettura 2023

 

Photo credits:

Installation and detail views, ‘Seeing Forest’ at the Singapore Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2024. Courtesy of Robert Zhao Renhui