Mynas by Robert Zhao

At 7pm every day, thousands of Javan Mynas descend onto trees along Orchard Road, a major shopping and tourist district in Singapore. They have been the bane of retailers and shoppers for the past few years, dirtying pavements with their droppings and emitting a ferocious noise with their collective squawking. Great congregations of Javan Mynas are not uncommon in Singapore. A colonising species, the Indonesian bird was first introduced to Singapore as pets in the 1920s. Now they have out-competed its larger relative, the Common Myna, to became the most common bird in Singapore.

About Robert Zhao Renhui

Robert Zhao Renhui (b. 1983, Singapore) is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the complex and commingled relationships between nature and culture. Working across installation, photography, video and sculpture, Zhao is interested in the multifarious beings and objects that constitute the living world, and whose experiences and knowledge enrich our collective existence.

Zhao has held solo exhibitions, The Forest Institute (2022) at Gillman Barracks, Singapore and Monuments in the Forest at ShanghART Gallery (2023) in Shanghai. His latest work is a performance installation titled Albizia (2023), commissioned by Esplanade– Theatres on the Bay. He has also been featured in the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023), 10th Busan Biennale (2020), 6th Singapore Biennale (2019), 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2018), 11th Taipei Biennale (2018), 17th Jakarta Biennale (2017) and 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016).

In 2010, Zhao received the prestigious National Arts Council Young Artist Award, Singapore’s highest award for young arts practitioners aged 35 and below. He was also a finalist for the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2017.