Make a travel deep of your inside, and don’t forget me to take

In her work, Charmaine Poh (b. 1990) explores issues of identity, power structures, feminism and queerness, in particular in the context of South East Asia. Multifaceted stories unfold in her art, which combines video, installation, and performance, reflecting on the complexity of human perception and societal structures. Her works also feature reflections on ecology and responsible action, often in the form of a subtle resistance against dominant narratives. In 2025, she was named Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year”. The publication Make a travel deep of your inside, and don’t forget me to take is being published to mark Poh’s first solo exhibition at PalaisPopulaire in Berlin with accompanying essays and an interview about her work to provide context.

Charmaine Poh was born in 1990 in Singapore, and lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Singapore. Poh was a child actress and starred on Singaporean television as E-Ching on We Are R. E. M. (2003), a show featuring three children who solve mysteries. She earned a BA in international relations with a minor in communications and media studies from Tufts University in 2013 and an MA in visual and media anthropology in 2019 from the Free University of Berlin. In her film Good Morning Young Body (2021-2022), Poh recreated E-Ching, her character in We Are R. E. M., as a deepfake to explore issues of identity, sexuality, online harassment. Much of her work concerns queer identity in Singapore, where marriage is legally defined as a heterosexual instruction. Her photography series How They Love (2018 - 2019) captures the intimacy of queer couples. Her film Kin (2021) explores queer domestic life while What’s softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the world (2024) documents queer parents in Singapore. In 2024, her work was featured in the Nucleo Contemporaneo section of the 60th Venice Biennale, her Venice Biennale debut. In 2025, she was named Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year,” the first artist from Singapore to receive the honour. She was one of four winners of the 2026 Villa Romana Prize, the oldest art prize in Germany. She is a co-founder of Jom, a weekly digital magazine about Singapore.