Robert Zhao Renhui’s New Forest: Where a Fallen Tree Became a Global Lesson in Biodiversity and Climate Action

Singaporean artist Robert Zhao Renhui’s work has often been about his observations of the natural world. However, at the 2024 Art Jakarta, Indonesia’s prime art fair, Zhao Renhui was seen selling newspapers from a humble newsstand shed. This career change was actually part of a new piece titled New Forest, the very name of the self-published newspapers he sold at the fair, in collaboration with his gallery, ShanghART. As a daily newspaper, New Forest focuses on reporting happenings from an Albizia tree in Singapore that had fallen back in 7 September 2020.

Since the 28 metre tall tree fell, Zhao Renhui had been monitoring and collating how it interacts with its surrounding environments. He documents it in photographs and videos from motion-detecting cameras, revealing how the tree becomes home for various fungi and animals, all while decomposing into soil. By publishing his findings in a newspaper, albeit a self-made one, Zhao Renhui hopes to give more people exposure as to how just a single tree can bring great benefits to the planetary ecosystem, long after it has fallen. This is why New Forest by Robert Zhao Renhui is relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Life on Land.

New Forest is not Zhao Renhui’s first time utilizing his platform to monitor decomposing trees and its environmental benefits. In 2017, he had created a series of photographs titled Trying to Remember a Tree, where he had photographed the decomposition cycle of a very old and large tree that had collapsed near his home in Singapore. 

Then in 2018, he began utilizing motion detection cameras to record a fallen tree in his piece Watching a Tree Disappear. Here again, he was monitoring 24/7 another giant Albizia tree that had fallen after a storm. Then, he connected his cameras to the online streaming platform Twitch, allowing him to broadcast everything from playful squirrels to marching monitor lizards on the tree to an audience.

In today's world, where an estimate of 15 billion trees are cut down each year and the global number of trees have been cut nearly in half since the start of human civilization, New Forest by Robert Zhao Renhui is able to show the public the importance of these often ignored magnificent beings. As his videos, photographs and newspapers suggest, trees help support a large number of biodiversity and can also help remove carbon dioxide from air—an essential function when trying to fight climate change.

In New Forest, Robert Zhao Renhui turns a humble fallen tree into a profound environmental narrative, showcasing the significance of a single tree in sustaining planetary life. By reporting the decay and transformation of a fallen Albizia tree through a self-published newspaper sold at Art Jakarta, Zhao Renhui highlights the vital role trees play in biodiversity and the ecosystem. With New Forest, Zhao Renhui draws attention to the often-overlooked value of trees, inviting audiences to appreciate nature’s resilience and importance, even when facing decay.

Find out more about New Forest and other pieces by Robert Zhao Renhui on his ShanghART Gallery page or Instagram @robert_zhao.