Robert Zhao Renhui: Seeing Forest

“Every forest is liminal, even one that grows in the centre of the city. 
Disregarded and disposable in urban planning, it remains a universe unto itself.”

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is delighted to announce the title and theme of the exhibition conceived by Robert Zhao Renhui in collaboration with curator Haeju Kim, who will represent Singapore at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Seeing Forest offers an evocative exploration of secondary forests—abandoned, deforested spaces now regrown and overtaken by nature. 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.

Rooted in years of research accumulated from countless forest excursions and hours of patient observation, Zhao’s exhibition in Venice reveals the interactions and encounters of wildlife with human life in these lush yet forsaken sites, offering a testament to the tenacity of nature. 

Through Seeing Forest, visitors are invited to explore some of the ways in which human urban design can shape the natural world, resulting in an ecosystem of migrant species that echoes the trajectories and makeup of the city’s human population. 

In secondary forests, we can find the traces of humanity in debris and litter, the abandoned tents of migrant workers, the ruins of kampungs and colonial barracks, cast aside dustbins. Yet there is life, too. A canopy of fast-growing, non-native Albizia trees weaves a lacey web against the sky. Samba deer, escaped from the local zoo in the 1970s, form large roaming populations. Japanese sparrowhawks, flying in from Siberia, pause to drink from a concrete drain.

With video works, sound and sculptural installations, Seeing Forest explores the lesser-known stories of intersection, and moments of apparent dependence between human society and nature. The presentation reveals how these transitional spaces offer points of intersection for colonisation, migration, sustainability, and discovery, while suggesting that the edge of a city — especially one that is so carefully planned — may be the most intense frontier in existence.

Complementing Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, the theme for 2024 Venice Biennale, Zhao’s presentation offers a quietly fierce tribute to the undomesticated and free forests found along the margins of our urban lives. 

As the world enters the era of the Anthropocene and humanity is forced to face the impact of climate change, Seeing Forest sounds a call to audiences around the world to pay attention to the vivid ecosystems around us, while offering a beacon of hope that communities—human and non-human, visible and hidden, natural and developed—can coexist in harmony.

Robert Zhao Renhui, artist: “Secondary forests are a second chance for nature to find a way to reclaim its place after environmental and human disruptions. They provide a radically hospitable space for a variety of living subjects, where novel organisms are able to thrive despite and because of human activity—an abandoned dustbin, for example, turns into a waterhole for migrant birds. These spaces are also rich in histories and ecologies, and this interest has driven the exploration of these multilayered ecosystems in my practice over the last seven years. I hope that my presentation captures the richness and variety of the sensuous surroundings, and allows us to experience these spaces as active, animate, and open-ended.”

Haeju Kim, curator: “Robert Zhao’s 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. In the meanings generated by these observations, we are offered a rare glimpse into the true complexities and realities of the natural world around us. The exhibition will be a reminder that even in the most modernised places, humans cannot wrest initiative and tenacity from nature, and we are only part of the broader ecosystem and intricate web of the world. Through the sensorial experience that the exhibition will offer, I hope that audiences can listen attentively to what nature says to us.”

Eugene Tan, Commissioning Panel Co-Chair and Director of SAM: “SAM believes in the power of art to inspire change. In Robert Zhao’s Seeing Forest, the artist goes beyond quiet contemplation to offer audiences hope in the resilience of our natural world by evoking the experiences of secondary forests in Singapore. As societies around the world engage with the challenges of climate change, we hope that the exhibition will provoke conversations on the possibilities of mutual co-existence and more connected ways of being.” 

Commissioned by the National Arts Council, Singapore, and organised by SAM, this year marks Singapore’s 11th participation at the Venice Biennale. The official opening of the Singapore Pavilion will be on Wednesday, 17 April 2024 in the Arsenale’s Sale d’Armi. Seeing Forest is on view on the second floor of the building from 20 April to 24 November 2024. More information can be found here.

Media queries
International: Amanda Kelly and Alessandra Biscaro (Pickles PR)
Singapore and Southeast Asia: Leck Choon Ling (Tate Anzur) and Gwyneth Liew (SAM)