Deutsche Bank has named Charmaine Poh as “Artist of the Year” for 2025. To mark the occasion, the PalaisPopulaire is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition of the Singaporean-Chinese artist and filmmaker.
Poh works with video, installation, and performance. Her multimedia narratives center on identity and power structures, feminism, and queerness in Southeast Asia. In her work, multiple perspectives and perceptions – past and future – overlap like a flowing stream of consciousness.
In Make a travel deep of your inside, and don’t forget me to take, she also investigates time travel, ecology, responsible conduct, and resistance. The landscapes in her films reflect the intertwined facets of Singapore: from the financial district, symbolizing global trade, to the mangrove forest on the city’s fringes, threatened by land reclamation.
Water is omnipresent in Poh’s work. It represents life, fluidity, a soft but persistent energy. Her video installation The Moon is Wet (2025) tells the stories of three protagonists: the sea goddess Mazu, the “Majie” – migrant, unmarried domestic workers of the twentieth century – and a contemporary Indonesian domestic worker. Singapore’s economic rise is as closely linked to its waterfront location as it is to the migration of laborers. Poh gives voice to their forgotten stories in her three-channel video installation.
For Poh, responsible action also meas caring for the planet. Her film What’s softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the world, which premieres at the Venice Biennale in 2024, is dedicated to tender vulnerable moments. Accompanied by nature footage, queer couples talk about the birth of their children and offer intimidate insights into the lives of their non-heteronormative families in Singapore.
Poh advocates for the protection of endangered ecosystems, animals, and plants, as well as for the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community. In her video works public solitude (2022) and GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY (2021-23), she processes her traumatic experiences as a child television star in Singapore in the 1990s. Using AI and archival footage, she creates a deepfake avatar of her younger self - a response to the sexualization of her child’s body and the media attention it received. The avatar becomes a medium for media critique and cyberfeminism activism. A in all her work, Poh’s focus is in self-empowerment in a world where the lines between reality and virtuality are increasingly dissolving.
Home
Audio Text
Deutsche Bank has named Charmaine Poh as “Artist of the Year” for 2025. To mark the occasion, the PalaisPopulaire is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition of the Singaporean-Chinese artist and filmmaker.
Poh works with video, installation, and performance. Her multimedia narratives center on identity and power structures, feminism, and queerness in Southeast Asia. In her work, multiple perspectives and perceptions – past and future – overlap like a flowing stream of consciousness.
In Make a travel deep of your inside, and don’t forget me to take, she also investigates time travel, ecology, responsible conduct, and resistance. The landscapes in her films reflect the intertwined facets of Singapore: from the financial district, symbolizing global trade, to the mangrove forest on the city’s fringes, threatened by land reclamation.
Water is omnipresent in Poh’s work. It represents life, fluidity, a soft but persistent energy. Her video installation The Moon is Wet (2025) tells the stories of three protagonists: the sea goddess Mazu, the “Majie” – migrant, unmarried domestic workers of the twentieth century – and a contemporary Indonesian domestic worker. Singapore’s economic rise is as closely linked to its waterfront location as it is to the migration of laborers. Poh gives voice to their forgotten stories in her three-channel video installation.
For Poh, responsible action also meas caring for the planet. Her film What’s softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the world, which premieres at the Venice Biennale in 2024, is dedicated to tender vulnerable moments. Accompanied by nature footage, queer couples talk about the birth of their children and offer intimidate insights into the lives of their non-heteronormative families in Singapore.
Poh advocates for the protection of endangered ecosystems, animals, and plants, as well as for the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community. In her video works public solitude (2022) and GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY (2021-23), she processes her traumatic experiences as a child television star in Singapore in the 1990s. Using AI and archival footage, she creates a deepfake avatar of her younger self - a response to the sexualization of her child’s body and the media attention it received. The avatar becomes a medium for media critique and cyberfeminism activism. A in all her work, Poh’s focus is in self-empowerment in a world where the lines between reality and virtuality are increasingly dissolving.
Further artworks from this exhibition
GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY, 2021-23
301
public solitude, 2022
302
Majie, 2016
303
The Moon is Wet, 2025
304
What’s softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the world, 2024
305