During his extensive visits to different natural habitats around the UAE in the summer of 2022, Zheng Bo was captivated by the umbrella thorn acacia tree, known locally as Samur. For his Artist’s Garden commission at Jameel Arts Centre, Bo choreographed a dance with two human dancers and a Samur tree in the Mleiha desert as a way to understand and reconnect with the land and the tree. The dance pays homage to the tree’s strength and tenacity – the vibrancy of its branches, the delicacy of its leaves, and the defiance of its thorns. The performance is presented at Jameel Arts Centre as a film installation set within a landscape of indigenous plants that thrive in the desert.

Samur

Zheng Bo collaborates with seven Pakistani farmers living and working on a date palm farm outside Dubai to make a dance. The project celebrates the beauty of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) and the skill of these stewards, highlighting intimate relations cultivated over millennia, vital to the economy and culture of the region.  Phoenix underscores the contribution of diasporic farmers to regional agriculture, while also drawing attention to the growing phenomenon of climate-induced migration, which in the coming decades is estimated to affect over a billion people, many of them in Asia.