Zheng Bo or the erotics of plants

Amid a primordial forest, lithe men in the nude are arranged in a Boschian tableau, pleasuring themselves with ferns. Tongues trail the gentle ripples of fronds, hips thrust into concealed stems. This garden of Earthly delights is not a moral allegory but, rather, oriented by the relational ethics of ‘trial and play’ – in the words of Zheng Bo, the Hong Kong-based artist behind this ongoing series of videos collectively titled ‘Pteridophilia’ (2016–). Indeed, the works’ panoply of sexual acts – licking, wrapping, stroking, biting, ingesting, rubbing, fucking – beckons us toward a queer ecological horizon of potential vegetal-human intimacies. At the same time, this horizon is constrained by the ethical quandary of the human exploitation of plants, one that is ever more urgent in an age of ecological crises.

The seeds of Zheng’s early fascination with ferns were sown during a residency in Taipei in 2016. There, he realized that apart from indigenous peoples, the Japanese colonialists and nationalists of Taiwan’s history ignored these ubiquitous plants, which were also ignored by the Han Chinese immigrants who had settled in the island state earlier. The cultural marginalization of ferns becomes more poignant considering their nonbinary sexuality (of their spores, apogamy, and rhizomes). Fern reproduction escapes the ‘prescription of male and female sexuality to flowering plants,’ explains Zheng, transgressing even the queer vocabulary of humans. For the artist, ferns are queer provocations, reminding us that both humans and non-humans ‘could be more multi-sexual.’   

In the kernel of ‘Pteridophilia’ lies the pleasures of kinship with nature. On one level, the protagonist of these videos – to be presented by Edouard Malingue Gallery in Art Basel Miami Beach’s Nova sector – is the forest’s verdant tropical idyll. The jungle ‘is much more aesthetically pleasing than any exhibition I’ve ever done,’ says Zheng. On another level, the series builds on the artist’s preoccupation with pornography, a medium based, he continues, on ‘narrow, commercial categories that should be expanded, because our erotic desires are so rich.’ Zheng’s commitment to sexual diversity could be gleaned from the participation of the local BDSM community in the series’ third installment, with members experimenting with fern-human sexual relations through novel combinations of submission and dominance. The fourth installment focuses on two actors adoring a fern’s new fronds, also known as fiddleheads, while appropriating the distinct erotic language of ‘boys’ love,’ a kind of anime and manga popular among young Japanese women. By foregrounding the natural world as a space of sensuality, vulnerability, and effeminacy, ‘Pteridophilia’ stands against the more common, rugged, and masculine fantasy of the great outdoors, where ‘the natural’ is employed to buttress macho heteronormativity. In this vein, Zheng’s queer ecology is one that distends the boundary between ‘the natural’ and ‘the unnatural,’ unfurling alternative ways to relate to nature.

In ‘Pteridophilia,’ sex becomes a stage that dramatizes our ethical anxieties over plants. Zheng is often asked about the question of consent in sex between humans and plants. In reply, the artist raises a provocative counterquestion: ‘Did you ask for consent when you ate your plants for lunch today?’ Why is eating plants less intimate and more morally acceptable than having sex with them? Zheng emphasizes that consent from plants should move beyond the sexual realm into the everyday. In a time of – in the artist’s own words –‘unstable ecological systems,’ it is necessary to confront the vegetal-human ethics embedded in ‘Pteridophilia.’ Zheng himself acknowledges that while ‘these ethical questions need some time to be grappled with,’ cultivating engagement – erotic or otherwise – with other species might eventually bear fruit.

Marcus Yee is a writer from Singapore, currently based in Hong Kong.

Zheng Bo is represented by Edouard Malingue Gallery (Hong Kong, Shanghai). 

Discover more artists and galleries participating in Art Basel Miami Beach's Nova sector here.

Top image: Zheng Bo, Pteridophilia II (detail), 2018. Film still from 4K video, color, sound, 20min. Courtesy of the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong and Shanghai.