Special exhibition

Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vũ, Extinction Gong, 2017. Every time a species goes extinct, the Extinction Gong sounds, again and again it can be heard. Emblazoned on it is the "Extinction Symbol," the official marker of the sixth mass extinction that scientists have been confirming with great concern for several years. On the back of a large Chinese chao gong is a robotic mechanism that strikes the gong in rhythm with the estimated extinction rate, once every ten minutes or so.

Robert Zhao Renhui, Useful Nature, Useless Nature, 2017. Robert Zhao Renhui of Singapore's Institute of Critical Zoologists explores and catalogs the evolution of nature with a particular focus on the influences of human activities such as domestication, cultivation, or laboratory experimentation. The artist's room-sized installation in discarded display cases at CeNak, created especially for Vanishing Legacies, reflects on Singapore Island's process of change over the past 150 years. In an idiosyncratic ensemble, Zhao's objects and texts reflect on the transformation of the rainforest island of Singapore into today's megametropolis.

Mark Dion: Rhinoceros Horn, 2014. rhinoceros horn replica, bitumen, flea market items. Courtesy Liebelt Collection, Hamburg

Ursula Biemann & Paulo Tavares, Forest Law, 2014

An earlier work by Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Leopard, Impala, 2016. Rare earth neon and mammoth ivory.

Paulo Tavares, Trees, Vines, Palms and Other Architectural Monuments, 2017. Policarpo Tserenhorã and Domingos Hö’awari conduct botanic inventory research in the cemetery site of the ancient settlement of Tsinõ.

Bronze statue of Alfred Russel Wallace in the London Natural History Museum. The statue was dedicated by Sir David Attenborough and the Wallace Memorial Fund in the museum's garden on November 7, 2013, Wallace's 100th birthday.

This stuffed female orangutan is one of the rare mammal specimens that can be proven today to have come from the Southeast Asia expedition of natural history collector Alfred Russel Wallace. The object, which is also interesting because it shows an orangutan standing upright with a stick, is in the collection of the London Natural History Museum.

"Natives of Aru shooting the great bird of paradise" (Bildausschnitt).

Butterfly drawings in one of Wallace's many notebooks from his eight years in the Malay Archipelago.

Measurement of a flower of the Sumatran giant flower Amorphophallus titanum in the Botanical Garden of Buitenzorg (Bogor, Java) circa 1900.

Cross section of the skull of a deer boar (Babyrousa), as it occurs alone on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where it was also hunted by Wallace in the mid-18th century and described for European science.

Indonesian beetles from the Alfred Russel Wallace collection at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, where insectologist Darren Mann has been busy for years searching the insect collections for Wallace objects to restore the original historic cases.

The prickly fruits of the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) are used to extract palm oil, which is later used for countless products, including cosmetics, food, but also so-called biofuels. Indonesia is now the world's largest exporter of crude palm oil, and the oil palm itself is considered the most successful tropical crop of the present. The price, however, is clear-cutting - gigantic monoculture landscapes increasingly threaten habitats and unique biodiversity on islands such as Borneo, Sumatra and Papua New Guinea, but also in the Philippines, West Africa, the Caribbean and South America.

The crude oil must be pressed out of the oil palm fruits almost immediately after harvesting, otherwise the fruits will decay. That is why palm oil factories with their steaming chimneys, as here in southwest Sumatra, are part of the landscape of the oil palm growing areas. Long lines of trucks loaded with fruit form in front of the gates of these factories and the drivers often wait for days and nights until it is finally their turn.

Birds of paradise and chicken in the collection of the Indonesian Institute of Science, Bogor, Java.

To provide contrast for the photographer of this image, European scientists hold up a white sheet behind a coffee plant at the Buitenzorg Botanical Garden (Bogor, Java).

A bird of paradise bellows in the collection of the Indonesian Institute of Science, Bogor, Java.

Skull of an orangutan (Pongo pigmaeus) in the collection of the Indonesian Institute of Science, Bogor, Java.

Bird bellows from Alfred Russel Wallace's convolute from the Malay Archipelago in the collection of the Museum of Natural History London/Tring.

Javanese plantation workers circa 1900.

A pile of ashes from 103 insect species burned on a light bulb in Singapore, 25 of which are still scientifically unknown species.

The artist Armin Linke during shooting in the peat fire area of the Indonesian province Riau, Sumatra.