Singaporean artist Charmaine Poh named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year for 2025
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Artist Charmaine Poh is seen here with her video work The Young Body Universe (2021-22) at the Singapore Art Museum.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
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SINGAPORE – Singaporean artist Charmaine Poh has been named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year for 2025.
The 34-year-old, fresh from showing her work in the main exhibition of the 2024 Venice Biennale, tells The Straits Times: “I was so surprised. But honestly, this entire year has been a surprise.”
The artist, who is based in Singapore and Berlin, will get to put on a solo exhibition at Berlin’s PalaisPopulaire during Berlin Art Week in September 2025 as part of the award. She says of the show, which will feature a new commission: “It’s an opportunity of many firsts – it’s my first solo and my first institutional exhibition in Berlin.
“Right now, I’m thinking about histories and cosmologies in Singapore that have gone under the surface of public memory or acknowledgement. I’m interested in the stories that make us who we are.”
In a statement on Dec 4, Ms Britta Farber, head of art and culture at Deutsche Bank, says Poh’s “gentle, often vulnerable works stand in sharp contrast to the harsh realities faced today by minorities, the socially marginalised and those in need of protection”.
The award recognises promising artists with artistically and socially relevant work. It focuses on works at the core of Deutsche Bank’s art collection, namely paper-based art and photography.
Poh is the first Singaporean artist to receive the award, which has been given out annually since 2010. She was nominated by Dr Stephanie Rosenthal, director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, who says her work “often examines intimate, chosen relationships that extend beyond traditional family ties”.
Poh’s works include Good Morning Young Body (2021-2022), a video work using found footage from her career as a child actor in the early 2000s, which showed at the Singapore Art Museum in 2023
What’s Softest In The World Rushes And Runs Over What’s Hardest In The World (2024), which examines queer parenting and kinship in Singapore, showed at the 2024 Venice Biennale
In August, Poh was selected by ST as one of 13 young Singaporeans under the age of 35
Artist Charmaine Poh’s films examine the struggles of queer women in Singapore.
PHOTO: CHARMAINE POH
