Robert Zhao: After Control

Robert Zhao Renhui (b. 1983, Singapore) works across photography, video, and installation. His practice is based on long-term observation of environments shaped by human activity, focusing on how other living beings inhabit and adapt within these conditions.

Rather than separating the natural from the artificial, Zhao’s work considers landscapes where both are already intertwined—secondary forests, urban infrastructure, abandoned developments, and managed sites. These are not untouched environments, but places where ecological systems continue to form under conditions of control.

This exhibition brings together recent works developed across Christmas Island, Singapore, Tokyo, Hampi (India), and Phuket (Thailand), each grounded in site-specific research and sustained observation.

The exhibition takes place at Kyoto City University of the Arts, situated between two engineered waterways: the Kamo River, whose flooding was gradually contained through postwar river works, and the Takase River, an Edo-period canal that has been repeatedly altered, leaving fragments of its former course still present today. Some of these remnants remain near the university, where small forms of life continue to inhabit them.

Exhibition views