Robert Zhao Renhui
Trying to Remember a Tree
Relearning How to Look at Nature Through the Death and Regeneration of Trees
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Fotografiska Shanghai is honored to present Trying to Remember a Tree, a solo exhibition by Singaporean artist Robert Zhao Renhui. Opening from July 24 to December 6, 2026, the exhibition brings together five groups of works centered on the lifecycle of trees. Through photography, moving image, surveillance footage, and installation, the exhibition examines how humans perceive, understand, and intervene in the natural world.
Having represented Singapore at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, Zhao’s practice has long focused on the complex and nuanced entanglements between humans and nature. He is known for founding the fictive "Institute of Critical Zoologists," a framework through which he adopts the methods of scientific inquiry, ecological research, and archival construction to establish a unique artistic language that blurs the boundaries between documentation and speculation, observation and narrative. By positioning photography as a method of critical investigation into reality, he continuously questions how human practices of classification, naming, and management shape our perception of the living world.
The exhibition Trying to Remember a Tree extends Zhao’s sustained investigation into urban order and natural ecologies, turning his attention to the complete lifecycle of a single tree. The exhibition takes a fallen rain tree as its point of departure, presenting the meticulously recorded 28,017 leaves, truncated remains of tree trunks, and 24-hour surveillance footage documenting the tree’s decomposition process. Zhao observes that within highly efficient modern urban landscapes, a dead tree is often viewed merely as debris to be quickly disposed of. Through this act of attentive observation and recording, the exhibition brings these overlooked natural remnants back into urban visibility, allowing a specific tree to serve as a lens through which to reconsider urban ecology.
Moving from high-precision photography to dynamic monitoring, and from archival collecting to installation, Zhao emphasizes the documentation of life as an ongoing process. The precise number of leaves, the slow rhythm of decomposition, and the subtle transformations between life and its environment all become integral components of the work. These creations reveal how landscapes are shaped by human intervention while demonstrating how nature adapts, responds to, and at times resists such attempts at control, thereby destabilizing the seemingly rigid boundaries between the artificial and the natural.
Zhao notes that before we engage with broader discussions of ecosystems or environmental futures, we must first return to a grounded, micro-level act of looking—shifting from merely seeing to truly attending. As the artist dryly observes, "without looking at a tree, there is no forest." This statement both encapsulates his methodology and guides the core perspective of the exhibition. In an era where urbanization continuously absorbs nature into systems of planning and governance, Trying to Remember a Tree does not offer a singular answer. Instead, it invites visitors to slow down and encounter a specific tree and a real span of time, rediscovering the vital, co-existent connections that remain deeply entangled yet easily missed in our everyday lives.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Robert Zhao Renhui (b. 1983) is a Singaporean visual artist who works primarily with photography, while also employing multidisciplinary approaches that bring images and objects into dialogue. His practice explores the relationship between humans and the natural world, questions of morality and ethics, and the ways in which human attitudes and perspectives shape our understanding of nature. He has held solo exhibitions in Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, Italy, and the United States, and has participated widely in biennales and photography festivals internationally.
In 2024, Zhao represented Singapore at the Venice Biennale. His recent exhibitions include the 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2023); the 1st Beijing Art Biennale, Beijing (2022); The Forest Institute, Singapore (2022); Busan Biennale: Words at an Exhibition, Busan, South Korea (2020); Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2019); The Lines We Draw, Yalu River Art Museum, Dandong (2019); Effects, Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States (2019); Observe, Experiment, Archive, Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, London, United Kingdom (2019); the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Australia (2018); Taipei Biennial, Taipei (2018); JIWA: Jakarta Biennale 2017, Jakarta, Indonesia (2017); the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2017); and the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2016).
Zhao received the UOB Painting of the Year Award, Singapore, in 2009, and the Deutsche Bank Award in Art from the University of the Arts London in 2011. In 2010, he was awarded the Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council, Singapore, the nation’s highest award for young artists. In 2017, he was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award as the only Southeast Asian artist of that edition. In 2019, his work for the 6th Singapore Biennale was selected for the 12th Benesse Prize. More recently, he received the inaugural Silvana S. Foundation Commission Award in 2020 and an Excellence Award at the 44th New Cosmos of Photography in 2021.