He counts the stars and call them all by name

2014 - Photography (Photography)

Robert Zhao Renhui

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Created during Zhao Renhui’s residency at Kadist SF in 2014, the photographic grid features a selection of some 6,000 members from single family of flies –hoverfly– identified over the last 25 years by Sacramento-based Dr. Martin Hauser, Senior Insect Biosystematist at the California Department of Food and Agriculture and longtime acquaintance of the artist. Worldwide specialist of hoverflies, Dr. Hauser collected the insect and meticulously sorted them out. The label below each fly indicates the country where it is from, its species, its size, etc. Some of the hoverflies look like bees and wasps, for a yet-unknown reason. During his career, Dr. Hauser identified many new species of hoverfly: holotypes, the single specimen upon which new nominal species are based (red tag), and isotypes that follow duplicates of the holotypes (green tags). By colliding these scientific methods of explaining the world with visual art, Zhao Renhui perhaps invites critical reflection on human’s thrift for objective knowledge and datas by blurring the lines between objective documentation and fictional narrative.

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Robert Zhao Renhui’s multimedia practice questions fact-based presentations of ecological conservation and reveals the manner in which documentary, journalistic, and scientific reports sensationalize nature in order to elicit viewer sympathy. Zhao portrays humans as figures curious about their natural environment, which is at times mysterious and unpredictable. Through observing human behavior in front of animals, Zhao’s critical lens examines various modes and preconceived notions of what he calls a “zoological gaze”—the manner through which humans view animals and nature. This perspective challenges the dualistic separation between the human and the non-human worlds. Under the name of a fictional institution, The Institute of Critical Zoologists (ICZ), Zhao’s work creates visual ambiguities that destabilize assumptions about the ways in which images present facts, represent reality, and disseminate truths. Zhao was in residency at KADIST San Francisco in 2014.

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