Charmaine Poh named “Artist of the Year” 2025

Charmaine Poh has been chosen as Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year” for 2025. Born in 1990, the Singaporean-Chinese artist and documentary filmmaker divides her time between Singapore and Berlin. In her work, she explores themes such as agency and repair, as well as the visibility and invisibility of queerness and femininity in Asia. Her work is also influenced by Eastern philosophy, media criticism, and cyberfeminism. In the fall of 2025, an exhibition dedicated to Charmaine Poh will be presented at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin.

Poh studied Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and began her career in experimental documentary photography. In 2024, she was featured in the main exhibition of the 60th Venice Art Biennale. Her films and installations straddle the border between documentary, interview, and visual essay. Poh creates poetic, narrative portraits exploring the construction of identity and social norms.

A key aspect of her current film work is the relationship between nature and civilization. Her films often incorporate footage of plants, animals, and biotopes, offering a different perspective alongside insights into queer life. Poh examines the fundamental question of what is truly “natural.” She uses documentary and found material, stages studio recordings and performances, and works with artificial intelligence and avatars. Research and writing are central to Poh’s artistic and activist practice. She has published numerous texts about her work and journalistic articles in international publications. She is a member of the Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR) and co-founder of Jom, an independent magazine published in Singapore since 2022.

Charmaine Poh was nominated by Stephanie Rosenthal, Director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, who served as a juror for the prize for the second time. “Charmaine Poh's work critically examines societal issues, focusing on the stigmatization of queer communities,“ says Rosenthal. “Poh is often drawing inspiration from concepts like Édouard Glissant’s notion of opacity—the right to remain opaque, ambiguous and complex. She explores the politics of visibility and the challenges of representing marginalized bodies, particularly within Singapore’s queer community.”

The artist gained international recognition with the films Kin (2021) and What’s the softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the worlds (2024), which depict forms of queer family life in Singapore. In her ongoing series “THE YOUNG BODY UNIVERSE,” begun in 2021, she creates a pre-pubescent avatar of herself to process her experiences as a child actress on Singaporean television.

“Charmaine Poh combines advocacy for social equality and comprehensive LGBTQI rights with new artistic forms of storytelling. Her gentle, even vulnerable works vehemently contradict the harshness with which minorities, the socially vulnerable, and those in need of protection are persecuted and marginalized today. She experiments with technologies that shape and control—from AI algorithms to digital surveillance tools. This is precisely what makes her work highly topical,” says Britta Färber, Global Head of Art & Culture at Deutsche Bank.

About the award
Established in 2010, the “Artist of the Year” award focuses on promising artists who have created an artistically and socially relevant body of work that incorporates the two focal points of the Deutsche Bank Collection: works on paper and photography. Since 2023, a personality from the global art world, rotating every two years, has nominated artists for the  award.

Stephanie Rosenthal, Director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, led the Gropius Bau in Berlin until 2022. Previously, she held senior curatorial positions at the Hayward Gallery, London, and Haus der Kunst in Munich. In 2016, she served as Artistic Director of the 20th Biennale of Sydney, and in 2019, she chaired the jury for the 58th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.