Charmaine Poh at MUDEC: the 2025 Artist of the Year’s First Solo Exhibition in Italy

From September 18 to November 1, 2026, MUDEC – Milan Museum of Cultures, in collaboration with Deutsche Bank and 24 ORE Cultura, presents – Il Sole 24 ORE Group, the exhibition *Make a travel deep of your inside, and don’t forget me to take* by Singaporean-Chinese artist Charmaine Poh (Singapore, 1990), named Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year 2025. Curated by Britta Färber, Global Head of Art & Culture at Deutsche Bank, the exhibition arrives in Milan following its run at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin and marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Italy.

For the fifth consecutive year, the Artist of the Year award is being held at MUDEC, confirming the collaboration between Deutsche Bank and 24 ORE Cultura – Il Sole 24 ORE Group, which began in 2022 and is aimed at promoting contemporary artistic research. The initiative stems from a shared commitment to introduce an ever-wider audience to the languages of contemporary art, promoting works that offer new perspectives on the cultural, social, and political transformations of our time. This edition will also be accompanied by a rich program of related activities, including workshops, talks, guided tours, and participatory events aimed at diverse audiences. The public program, developed around the main themes explored by Charmaine Poh—from digital identity to the representation of the body, from public visibility to new forms of relationships and social interaction—expands upon the exhibition, transforming the visit into an experience of dialogue and deeper engagement.

Born in Singapore in 1990, Charmaine Poh is the youngest artist to have received the title of Artist of the Year. Her multidisciplinary practice spans video, photography, installations, performance, and writing, weaving together autobiography, memory, technology, ecology, cyberfeminism, and history. Her works address issues related to identity, power dynamics, queerness, and the mechanisms of contemporary representation.

The exhibition’s title, *Make a travel deep of your inside, and don’t forget me to take*, stems from a phrase that emerged during an exchange of letters between the artist and a friend. Its deliberately imperfect linguistic construction becomes a symbol of a space suspended between different languages, cultures, and lived experiences. The entire project takes the form of an immersive environment in which individual memory and the collective dimension, the body and technology, intimacy and social construction coexist and engage in constant dialogue.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is *The Moon is Wet* (2025), a large-scale three-channel video installation created specifically for this project. The work interweaves the stories of the sea goddess Mazu, the “Majie” (unmarried migrant domestic workers from southern China), and a contemporary Indonesian domestic worker, sparking a reflection on the migrations that have shaped Singapore’s history, on care work, and on networks of female solidarity. Alongside this installation are other works that explore recurring themes in the artist’s practice, such as the body, breath, vulnerability, and the relationship between physical presence and digital existence. In *Heavy is the root of light* (2025), an evocative light installation composed of projections and poetic fragments, light, language, and memory merge into an immersive environment that invites the visitor into a suspended perceptual experience.

Reflections on identity and relationships also run through *What’s softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the world*, a work in which several queer couples share their desires, fears, and expectations related to parenthood and the creation of alternative family models in contemporary Singapore, challenging social and cultural conventions. With *Good Morning Young Body* (2021–2023), however, Charmaine Poh returns to her own experience as a young television actress in 1990s Singapore. Through archival materials and the use of deepfake technology, the artist reconstructs an avatar of her own adolescence to explore the representation of the female body, media exposure, and the new forms of violence that characterize the digital ecosystem.

With *Make a travel deep of your inside, and don’t forget me to take*, Charmaine Poh weaves together personal experience and collective reflection to offer the public a space for dialogue on the themes of belonging, memory, care, and the many forms of resistance that permeate contemporary life.

Hours: Monday from 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday and Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Charmaine Poh at MUDEC: the 2025 Artist of the Year’s First Solo Exhibition in Italy

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