Why Art SG 2026 feels like a turning point in the art world
If art fairs are barometers of where culture is heading, then Art SG 2026 is reading decisively optimistic. Now in its fourth edition, it promises to be bigger in scale, broader in scope, and much more considered in how it frames the region’s artistic practices.
The headline shift this year is structural and symbolic: For the first time, Art SG will co-present with SEA Focus, Singapore’s homegrown platform dedicated to Southeast Asian contemporary art. Together, they bring 106 galleries from more than 30 countries and territories under one roof, offering single-ticket access to what promises to become the beating heart of Singapore Art Week in 2026.
“By joining forces, it allows us to present the region’s artistic practices within a broader international framework,” says Art SG co-founder Magnus Renfrew, “while preserving the curatorial depth and distinct identity that SEA Focus has built over time.”
Rather than diluting either platform, the integration sharpens both. Art SG maintains its international, blue-chip energy, while SEA Focus retains its distinctive curatorial identity.
As Renfrew puts it, the decision to join forces with SEA Focus was both “strategic and timely.” From his perspective, Southeast Asia has grown with increasingly active artists and institutions as participants in global conversations. And the world wants to engage with them.
Southeast Asia, contextualized, at the center
If Art SG provides the global frame, SEA Focus supplies the lens. The 2026 edition’s theme, “The Humane Agency,” positions artists as agents of compassion amid conflict, ecological crisis, and displacement. Participating galleries—from the Philippines’ Silverlens and The Drawing Room to Tokyo’s Mizuma Gallery and Singapore’s STPI—underscore the depth and diversity of Southeast Asian practice today.
Curator Tung writes, “In these unprecedented times, artists play a vital role in responding to global challenges and imagining alternative pathways toward a more compassionate and peaceful world.”
Renfrew sees this curatorial clarity as a crucial counterbalance to the scale of an international fair. “SEA Focus encourages slower looking and deeper reflection,” he says. Far from being overshadowed, Southeast Asian art becomes more legible and, in a sense, stronger, within this expanded context.
A fair that reflects how we’re collecting now
This sense of momentum is also mirrored in the market. According to Jin Yee Young, co-head of UBS Global Wealth Management Asia Pacific and country head of UBS Singapore, recent data shows a marked shift in who is collecting, and how.
“Female high-net-worth collectors had higher spending levels and displayed new collecting tendencies,” she notes, citing the latest Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting. “Women outspent men by 46 percent on art and antiques in 2024. The female high-net-worth individuals surveyed had art collections with a higher share of works by female artists, and they demonstrated greater openness to newly discovered talent.”
The broader outlook is equally buoyant. Singapore became the world’s fifth-largest importer of art and antiques in 2024, with import values rising by 74 percent to nearly $1.7 billion. “Furthermore, optimism is high among collectors,” Yee Young shares, “with 81 percent of high-net-worth individuals surveyed in Singapore feeling optimistic about the outlook for the Global Art Market in the next six months.”
This year also marks the launch of the Art SG Futures Prize presented by UBS, awarding $10,000 to an outstanding emerging artist. The aim, as Renfrew notes, “is designed to do more than recognize individual talent. It’s about creating meaningful momentum at a critical stage in an artist’s career.”
Performance, film, and encounters of art’s expansion
Art SG 2026 seems to also reflect how contemporary art is experienced not only on walls, but also through bodies, time, and space. A new dedicated Performance Art sector, curated by X-Zhu Nowell of Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum, makes that shift clear.
Renfrew mentions “works that demonstrate the depth, rigor, and resonance of performance-based practices today,” such as “Brian Fuata and Daniel Jenatsch’s ‘Instruction and Entertainment (minor gestures),’ John Clang’s ‘Reading by an Artist,’ as well as Bhenji Ra’s ‘Sissy in the Ruins.”
The Art SG co-founder also mentions Philippine-born Joshua Serafin and his newly commissioned “Relics: An Eyes Ones Blind.”
The sector highlights the fair’s practices now leaning more toward conceptual, experiential, and often participatory practices. For collectors, these works open new modes of engagement. For audiences, it expands what an art fair can feel like.
At the UBS Art Studio, the UBS Art Collection will screen Melati Suryodarmo’s “I Love You (2007),” an intense five-hour performance captured on video. Set in a stark red room, the artist repeatedly carries a large glass while uttering the phrase “I love you,” transforming a simple declaration into an endurance ritual. Underlying it, there seems to be a suggestion that collecting today is as much about ideas as it is about objects.
Looking ahead
With major international galleries returning, new initiatives spotlighting Indian and South Asian art, museum-level collaborations, and a citywide calendar that includes the Singapore Biennale and numerous institutional shows, Art SG 2026 feels less like a standalone event and more like a nexus in this art-filled week in Singapore.
“Ultimately, this move is about scale, visibility, and long-term sustainability, [and] reinforcing Art SG as a hub fair and providing a stronger, more unified platform for Southeast Asian art on the global stage,” Renfrew states.
This is good news for visitors to the island, as the integration of Art SG and SEA Focus transforms Singapore Art Week into a barometer to sense where contemporary art—especially from Southeast Asia—is going next.
Art SG and SEA Focus will run from Jan. 23 to 25, 2026 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
