2025 UOB Painting of the Year, Singapore

Cloud of Unknowing I is created by grinding and cutting into an aluminium composite panel to form shifting tones of light and shadow. This technique allows the image to change as light reflects across the surface, revealing or concealing marks depending on the viewer’s position or the lighting. Inspired by calligraphy as a mindful practice, the artist replaces brush and ink with industrial tools. Despite the noise of power tools, the process becomes one of calm and focus, with each cut made deliberately, like a permanent brushstroke.

The artwork evokes both gestural energy and peaceful emptiness. In response to uncertain times, the cloud becomes a symbol of formlessness and transformation, reminding viewers of the beauty in the ephemeral and the reality of constant change.

2025 UOB Painting of the Year, Indonesia

Kuasa Dalam Setara (Power in Equality) explores the intricate interplay between power, the body and the search for meaning in the lives of men and women, as understood through history and cosmology. The artist combines European visual heritage and Javanese mystical texts to reveal layered cultural discourses.

The artist draws on a fragment from Willem Isaacsz van Swanenburg’s 1608 engraving on vanitas to depict the female body as a symbol of mortality and moral values, shaped by societal expectations. At the same time, he reinterprets Serat Sastrajendra Hayuningrat — a sacred Javanese text that teaches harmony and enlightenment — through sculptural lines and shadow.

This artwork uses cowhide to revive Javanese traditions tied to the body, sacrifice and knowledge. A red Rajah Kalacakra — a mystical diagram symbolising the cosmic order and cycle of time — binds these ideas in a rhythmic flow. It invites reflection on equality, cultural inheritance, and how boundaries continue to be shaped.

2025 UOB Painting of the Year, Malaysia

Rumah Kita (Our Home) is a tribute to Malaysian unity embodied in a spiky clay sculpture inspired by the durian, a fruit that draws people together during its season.

The painting captures the sculpture’s raw and jagged form, reflecting both the durian’s thorny exterior and the bold geometry of 1950s brutalist architecture. It symbolised Malaysia’s shift away from colonial design towards a new vision of modernity and progress. Like the durian, tough outside, tender within, the sculpture shows that unity is not always smooth, but it is resilient and full of life. Its cracks and raw surfaces highlight the challenges Malaysia faces, while also celebrating the strength that keep the country moving forward.

2025 UOB Southeast Asian Painting of the Year,
2025 UOB Painting of the Year, Thailand

Dua (Pray for a Blessing) reflects humanity’s enduring longing for hope, desire, joy and peace. The artwork portrays women in a prayerful gesture, bearing silent wishes for renewal and harmony, with their figures woven with dreamlike scenes.

The artist uses embroidery as a medium and metaphor – each thread binding life to dream, the intimate to the universal. Withing these stitched surfaces lies a shared human aspiration: to find wholeness, to imagine a world made tender by hope.

2025 UOB Painting of the Year, Vietnam

Temporary Connection illustrates a group of urban labourers crowded together on the back of a truck, their gestures of holding, clutching and clinging expressing both mutual protection and fragile solidarity in an unfamiliar environment. Their bodies form a near-complete square at the centre, with one corner missing – symbolising the precarity and incompleteness of their struggle for survival.

Executed in lacquer and acid-etching on aluminium, the work contrasts the rough textures of the figures with the polished sheen of the metal surface. The reflective ground captures its surroundings and becomes an allegory for the gap between the hardship of the workers’ lives and the glittering façade of modern urbanity.

2025 Most Promising Artist of the Year, Indonesia

i am here captures a personal narrative of separation between child and father, across borders and time. On one side of the canvas, the artist preserves earlier paintings that speak to loss and familial memory. On what was once the back, now turned front, he collages photographs sent by his undocumented migrant father, interwoven with the repeated phrase “i am here” in small type.

The layering of photos and text draws viewers in for a closer look and a more intimate engagement with the artwork. Through painting and collage, the artist creates a personal archive of disrupted communication where fragments of memory, loss and the longing to be remembered come together.

2025 Most Promising Artist of the Year, Malaysia

I Love You, Bearbear is painted on cardboard, a material often discarded yet essential to those without shelter. The artwork transforms a humble surface into a poignant symbol of survival and dignity. At its centre, a solitary figure curls up, clinging to a soft toy bear for warmth. The posture conveys physical vulnerability intertwined with emotional isolation, reminding us that no matter where we sleep, we all seek love, comfort and a sense of worth.

This is a deeply personal work for the artist, who often draws on the street and witnesses lives the world tends to overlook. The artwork reflects not only the struggle of homelessness, but the aching absence of affection, attention, and acceptance that often accompanies it. The artist invites viewers to pause and reflect: “When was the last time you looked at someone society has tried to erase?” Behind every figure on the street is a soul, just like you and me. And more than anything, they need love.

2025 Most Promising Artist of the Year, Singapore

Existence is Prison, a Personal Account, captures the artist’s response to academic burnout and the emotional strain of being trapped within a rigid system. Inspired by her struggle to meet school demands, the work expresses grief over lost freedom and frustration with the pressure to constantly perform. The painting depicts an endless sea of people confined in identical rooms, dressed alike, symbolising how society forces individuals into a fixed mould. Yet within each cell, distinct emotions emerge, revealing the diverse and dynamic inner lives of those yearning to escape. While acknowledging the value of education, the piece reflects on the emotional turmoil it can bring during youth and explores how individuals respond differently to the same oppressive reality.

2025 Most Promising Artist of the Year, Thailand

Ctrl + Alt + Destruct confronts the dual nature of technology and artificial intelligence through the stark image of a bomb placed beside a keyboard. It evokes both the promise of progress and the looming threat of destruction when power is misdirected.

At the heart of the artwork lies a question of intent: these tools carry no inherent fate, they reflect the choices of those who wield them. The artwork reflects how innovation and risk are inseparable, held in balance by human hands.

2025 Most Promising Artist of the Year, Vietnam

Self-Portrait, 2025 (A Life Rooted in My Form as a Tree) is inspired by a chest X-ray and the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) that has sustained the artist’s life for a decade. The ICD, embedded within him like a “mother tree,” stands ready to jolt his heart back to life, raising a profound question: how might the “original” human be defined in a future shaped by technology?

Painted in acrylic on burlap, the artist exposes the body’s vulnerability, confronting the hidden self and initiates a dialogue with the spectral figure nestled within the chest.

More than autobiography, the artwork interrogates what it means to be human in an era where machines increasingly mediate survival. For the artist, the ICD becomes a cultural artifact, one he imagines displayed in a museum, bearing witness to both human fragility and the evolution of life itself.

Gold Award, Established Artist Category, Singapore

My Tiles and the Yellow Line explores the impact of urban and rural development on natural habitats. In Singapore, rapid expansion in buildings and infrastructure has led to biodiversity loss and significant environmental change. The artist uses abstract shapes, patterns and lines to reflect on these issues. Repeated visual elements and a sense of movement mirror the fast pace of urbanisation. Motifs such as floor tiles suggest artificial order and control, while yellow lines symbolise boundaries, direction and fragmentation. Together, these elements highlight the tension between nature and human development.

Silver Award, Established Artist Category, Singapore

Romance on Hobby Horses – The Gate Keepers is part of the Romance on Hobby Horses series, which uses playful and surreal imagery to explore themes of power, performance and fantasy. Three men in suits wear gas masks, hold plastic water guns and ride toy unicorns. They stand guard in a theatrical setting, framed by a pink and gold backdrop that resembles wallpaper or a curtain. Their toy weapons and masked faces suggest that authority can be more about appearance than substance.

The painting reflects on how modern expressions of masculinity and control often rely on showmanship and illusion rather than genuine strength or responsibility. It invites viewers to question who holds power and what it means when leadership is built on image instead of truth.

Bronze Award, Established Artist Category, Singapore

Vessel of Presence centres on a canvas stretched over a worn restaurant table, a surface that has witnessed everyday life and intimate moments. During the pandemic, the artist’s friend gave birth, but restrictions kept them apart. When restrictions lifted, they finally met, and the child left crayon marks on the canvas — offering a glimmer of hope in an anxious time.

The artist layers personal traces to build emotional depth, shaping a three-dimensional perspective guided more by feeling than logic. The artwork reflects a sincere and intuitive engagement with memory, presence, and the quiet beauty of transformation.

Gold Award, Emerging Artist Category, Singapore

Map of Stroll Through the Neighbourhood presents a layered and personal view of Jalan Besar. The artist captures the area’s rich mix of heritage shophouses, brothels, massage parlours, and bars, interwoven with scenes of everyday life. The painting contrasts gritty realism with dreamlike beauty, showing tall girls in the sunset and children playing in the park. It also depicts how the same playground becomes a gathering place for helpers and migrant workers on Sundays.

The bright lights of Jalan Besar Stadium shine through the artist’s window during football tournaments, while ongoing construction gradually blocks the view of the Singapore Flyer. Painted on raw linen and stained with an iron to resemble an old treasure map, the work blends plan, elevation and Chinese landscape styles to evoke a sense of floating and transience. It maps hidden stories, lived experiences and fleeting memories.

Silver Award, Emerging Artist Category, Singapore

Whispers of the Garden captures the quiet beauty of a botanical landscape through layered ink and watercolour on calico. It draws inspiration from the Singapore Botanic Gardens, expressing a deep emotional connection to green spaces as places of calm, solitude and healing.

The scene features trees, flowering plants, stone paths, water elements and sculptural forms. By omitting human and animal figures, the artist creates a contemplative space for personal reflection. This piece continues the artist’s exploration of nature as a space for introspection and visual poetry.

Bronze Award, Emerging Artist Category, Singapore

Transit portrays an elderly man waiting to alight from an SBS Transit bus. Late afternoon light casts dramatic shadows across the interior, transforming a familiar everyday moment into a quietly reflective scene. The artwork explores the transitional nature of commuting, a liminal space where passengers are neither at their origin nor their destination. In this in-between state, they rest, daydream or simply exist while sharing space with strangers.

Distorted reflections throughout the piece suggest the psychological depth of the experience. A blue undertone introduces a subtle discomfort, while warm orange light keeps the scene familiar and relatable. Although the elderly man appears alone, abstract reflections from the top deck hint at the presence of other commuters, capturing the fleeting connections formed during shared journeys.