Presenting:
Pteridophilia, Zheng Bo, 2016, 4k video,17’14”
Pteridophilia, a newly made word by the artist, consist of “pterido-” and “-philia”, which means a fetish and love for pteridophyta plants.
Cast
Chen Hsin-Hung
Kuo Tang-An
Liu Yu-Ting
Tsai Chia-Wei
Tzeng Yu-Hsing
Wang Jen-Wei
Producer: Huang Yung-Chih
Camera: Huang Yu-Yu
Sound and Editing: Wu Ping-Chung
Assistant: Chin Yeh-Cheng
In a forest of ferns, ancient Greek-like young men are touching and rubbing the leaves. The moaning sound in the soundtrack has made this video even more erotic. Under the moving shadows and light beams, green overflows out of the screen, fern leaves are shaking, with a delicate swishy sound. When there isn’t young men in the frame, the swishy sounds indicates that a young men, hidden in the forests somewhere, is touching and worshipping the ferns. All these imageries consist Zheng Bo’s artwork Pteridophilia.
Zheng claimed that his obsession with plants might come from his aging, as “the older I am, the stronger love I have for plants.” Chinese intellectuals and literati keep a tradition for appreciating plants, such kind of obsession could be easily discovered by the love of the “Four Esquires”: Plum, Orchid, Bamboo, and Chrysanthemum. In Chinese culture, plants is always a symbol and object for literati to externalize their hopes and ambitions. The love, obsession or admiration has never become a fetish.
The artist has done multiple practice on plants and identity, but Pteridophilia has pulled queer identity to another level and dimension, which is the love/lust between human and plants. Maybe “between” is a loose term here, since plants can’t respond in a relationship or sex, but if you categorize Pteridophilia as a fetishism, it would be too shallow and superficial.
Ancient Greek-like young men are featured with shyness and libido. They naïve side conflicts with their growing lust and desire of knowledge, which, as a result, a symbiosis of narcissism and confusion coexist on them. Artists who uses young men in their artworks as models or muses, such as Caravaggio, or here Zheng Bo, showcases a dominant lifeness and vitality.
About the artist
ZHENG Bo (born in Beijing, 1974; lives and works in Hong Kong) is an artist, writer, and teacher, committed to socially and ecologically engaged art. He investigates the past and imagines the future from the perspectives of marginalized communities and marginalized plants. He has worked with a number of museums and art spaces in Asia and Europe, most recently Cass Sculpture Foundation (Chichester, UK), TheCube Project Space (Taipei), and Villa Vassilieff (Paris).
