Zheng Bo
Zheng Bo, Pteridophilia 4, 2019, 4K video, color, sound, 16 min 35 sec, 16 min 35 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue
Zheng Bo (b.1974 in Beijing, lives and works in Hong Kong) is an ecoqueer artist of ethnic Bai heritage. Their works explore our erotic, political, and aesthetic engagements with plants. Through their socially and ecologically engaged practice, Bo looks for posthuman vibrancy in the human-plant relationships, imagining the future from the perspectives of marginalised communities and marginalised plants. Their practice involves drawing, dance, and film, as well as creating weedy gardens and living slogans. Bo is currently working on the Artist’s Garden commission at Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, as well as three botanical public works outside Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai. In 2022, they presented a forest dance film titled Le Sacre du printemps at the 59th Venice Biennale. In 2021, they staged Wanwu Council at the Gropius Bau in Berlin and Life is hard. Why do we make it so easy? at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden in Hong Kong. They participated in the Sydney Biennale (2022), Liverpool Biennial (2021), Yokohama Triennale (2020), Manifesta (2018), Taipei Biennial (2018), and Shanghai Biennial (2016). Their works are in the collections of Power Station of Art in Shanghai, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Singapore Art Museum, and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, among others. Zheng Bo studied with Douglas Crimp and received their PhD from the Graduate Program in Visual & Cultural Studies, University of Rochester, in 2012. They taught at China Academy of Art from 2010 to 2013, and currently teach at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where they lead the Wanwu Practice Group.
︎︎︎Exhibition