The Art PICNIC: AN ACT OF CREATION
Singapore art week 2026 x INSTINC Space
23 - 31 January 2026 | Wednesday - Friday ,1PM - 7PM. Saturday - Sunday, 1PM - 6PM.
39 Keppel Rd, #03-10 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065
brief
INSTINC is bringing something fresh to Singapore Art Week 2026: a one-of-a-kind exhibition where the act of making becomes the show. We’re transforming our gallery into a lively, communal studio, inviting artists to create live in front of the public, share their process, and turn experimentation into performance.
Step inside a space where creation unfolds before your eyes. This exhibition invites you to witness the artistic process as it happens, celebrating experimentation, dialogue, and the energy of making. Finished works are only part of the story; here, the act of creation itself takes center stage and visitors are invited to be part of it.
Across five days, 35 artists from Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan and beyond will work on site, bringing a mix of perspectives and practices to the gallery. Each day features six to seven artists working over five hours, offering a rare chance to observe, engage, and even contribute to the process. The experience is dynamic and unpredictable, reflecting the rhythms and energies of contemporary art in motion.
Watch this space for updates, including the daily line-up, artist profiles, and opportunities to join in. More details and surprises will be revealed as the exhibition approaches, so stay tuned.
Artist Lineup and introduction
Fri 23 Jan, 4–9 PM
ANDY YANG
Andy Yang Soo Kit (b. 1973, Malaysia) is a multi-disciplinary Singapore-based artist whose explorations in oil, acrylic, and ink upon a variety of supports have demonstrated his technical virtuosity and dexterity across the range of media. Building forms and advancing narratives led by intuition, his painterly compositions, informed by musical notions of counterpoint and harmony, find resolution upon the surfaces of his choosing. For his artistic excellence, he has received prominent artwork commissions. His artworks and performances have featured in numerous solo, group exhibitions and festivals, as well as established local institutions as well. His works can be found in numerous private and public collections internationally.
YEO SHIH YUN
Yeo Shih Yun is a contemporary artist recognised for her experimental approach to ink painting, blending traditional techniques with modern sensibilities. For over two decades, she has pushed the boundaries of the medium, using unconventional tools such as robots, remote-control cars, and even trees to create spontaneous, discovery-driven works. Her practice has been featured in institutions including the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and National Gallery Singapore (NGS), with notable projects like her solo exhibition Chance Encounters (2021). She has received the Sovereign Asian Art Prize People’s Choice Award (2012) and multiple distinctions in the UOB Painting of the Year Competition, and her work has been shown widely in galleries and museums around the world.
URICH LAU
Urich Lau is a visual artist, independent curator, art educator, based in Singapore, and a co-founder of INTER–MISSION and Hothouse. Graduated with a Master of Fine Art from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2004, he is a Senior Lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore.. Focusing in video art, photography media art, his has presented works in Singapore and internationally including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Serbia, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States and Uzbekistan. Exhibitions include Art Electronica 2024, Ukrainian Biennale of Digital and Media Art 2021, Open Possibilities (NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo, 2020), Pyeongchang Biennale 2017, the 7th Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, Singapore Biennale 2013, VII Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art and the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2014, 2016 and 2019 in Hong Kong.
CHIHIRO KABATA
KABATA Chihiro is an artist who crosses the limits of painting to shape what cannot be seen. She builds images through dense layers of oil-based ballpoint pen lines and reflective materials that fill and shift space. Her drawings grow from close, repeated motion, combining fine delicacy with raw intensity. The glossy surfaces create depth and also reflect the viewer, making you aware of your body and the surrounding room. Her works invite a direct encounter with painting as both object and experience, like a shadow of reality.
YUURI KABATA
Yuuri Kabata born and practice in JAPAN.Yuuri is a self‐taught visual artist. Currently based in Tokyo, Japan, Yuuri has had solo and group exhibitions internationally. Venues have included the Art Front Gallery, Meipam, Mitsui Art, Gallery G-wings, Gallery Valuer, Shinjuku Ophthalmologist Gallery, ART TRACE Gallery, Sato Museum, Nakanojo Biennale, Zibo art museum at China, Pyongtek museum at Korea, IANG Gallery at Korea, and Youkobo art space.
CHAN WAN KYN
Wan Kyn is a Multidisciplinary Visual Artist and Engineer who draws inspiration from the intangible elements of his surroundings, such as negative space, light, and human connection. Core to his creative exploration is that space is not passive; it actively enriches our experiences and shapes our collective memories. Expressing his concepts through a variety of mediums, practices, and methodologies, his works manifest themselves in myriad ways, from sculptural forms and immersive installations to digital expressions. Graduating with degrees in Mechanical Engineering, he desires to be a bridge between the diverse fields, perspective and practices.
ARYAN ARORA
Aryan Arora (b. 1999, Saharanpur, India) is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Singapore. A graduate of LASALLE College of the Arts and Goldsmiths, University of London, his practice explores identity, cultural taboos, and the pressures of societal expectation. Working in a distinctive monochromatic palette with latex-like, faceless figures, Aryan creates a signature visual language that reflects the dualities of presence and absence, concealment and vulnerability. His work asks how people navigate the masks imposed by society while searching for an authentic self. By abstracting the human form, he invites viewers to confront themes of performance, transformation, and survival in contemporary life. His works have been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, Art SG, Instinc, Visual Arts Gallery, Art Outreach Sg, World Art Dubai, The Substation, Google HQ Singapore, and Mumbai International Airport.
SUSAN OLIJ
Susan is a Singaporean painter born in Indonesia whose travel-based work blends observation and abstraction, experimenting with language to explore belonging and perspective, informed by her earlier career in fashion design.
Sat 24 Jan, 1–6 PM
EMI YEH WITH LUKE CHANG
Visual artist and designer EMI Yeh collaborates with her 10-year-old son Luke, a budding artist who started creating 3D animations at a young age, to participate in this project. They plan to expand this nine-grid concept into a broader range of works, fostering a cross-generational visual art dialogue.
MURAKAMI KAORU
MURAKAMI Kaoru is a Japanese artist based in Tokyo, whose practice focuses on overlooked forms of existence in everyday life. Through objects and installations, she works with found materials such as postcards, light bulbs, and photographs, engaging with traces of memory, use, and disappearance. Her material-based practice is informed by walking, through which she encounters fragments of daily life that often go unnoticed. Her work has been presented internationally, and she received the Kobe Mayor’s Award at Kobe-Rokko Meets Art 2024. She was selected for the TOKAS International Exchange Residency Program in Basel (2025), and her work is held in the public collection of Katsurao Village, Fukushima.
MURAKAMI AYA
MURAKAMI Aya (b. Paris, France) is a Japan-based artist whose practice centers on landscape as a framework for perception and interpretation. Working primarily with painting, she develops her work through cross-media approaches, incorporating cutting paper, installation and sculptural forms. By focusing on layers within painting and the spatial expansion of images, her work examines how landscapes are constructed, fragmented, and reassembled. She often juxtaposes bodily imagery with environmental motifs to explore the relationship between internal sensation and external space. Through these processes, She investigates landscape not as a fixed view, but as a shifting field shaped by memory, material, and experience.
CHANG HUI FANG
Chang Hui-Fang (b. 1981, Tainan, Taiwan) received her MA in Art Museum and Gallery Studies from Newcastle University, UK, in 2009. Her early works in Taiwan employed Chinese ink combined with pencil sketching on paper. She explores the tension between realism and abstraction. In her practice, she works with charcoal powder and gold leaf, using appropriation to examine materiality, time, and perception. She won First Prize at the Tainan Fine Art Exhibition in 2001. Her works have been exhibited at Instinc Art Space, ION Art Gallery, Affordable Art Fair, Artspace 222, Objectifs, Young Art Taipei, and Hong Kong Art Centre there.
AMADEA M
Amadea Mairina is a Bali-based artist. She studied Fine Arts at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Bali. Her practice is deeply influenced by personal experiences and everyday observations, exploring human interactions, relationships, and the conflicts and beauty found in social life. For Amadea, art-making is a reflective process through which she expresses emotions and thoughts by experimenting with color, form, texture, and various media. She continues to explore new painting techniques to develop and refine her visual language.
PATRICE CHOU
Patrice Chou is an independent curator exploring everyday experiences and their interplay with technology. Her practice emphasizes collaboration, process, and contextual sensitivity, shaping thoughtful exhibitions worldwide. With an MA in Communication Management and a BA in Psychology, she brings refined insight to contemporary curatorial projects, actively engaging in international art events while pursuing a Doctorate in Interdisciplinary Art Studies.
ERIC CHOONG
After graduating from the renowned Hong Kong Design Institute, Eric established his eponymous fashion label in 1988: Eric Choong. Eric is known to integrate and apply traditional Malaysian ethnic elements into his design concepts, using it to raise awareness of Southeast Asia’s cultural roots.
Over the years, Eric has been traveling around the world, capturing and harvesting the beauty of life with his camera – which ultimately becomes the imbuement to his design creations.
SUN 25 Jan, 1–6 PM
CLARISSA MASKILONE
Clarissa is a Singapore-based visual artist working in process-based abstraction. Her paintings unfold through cycles of layering, pause, and revision, allowing gesture and movement to emerge without predetermined form. Self-taught, she approaches each canvas as an evolving surface rather than a planned image, letting marks arrive in their own rhythm. Her practice is shaped by intuitive mark-making and quiet reflection, drawing from lived experience to explore presence and change. Clarissa also hosts Art Club Singapore, where she extends this interest in process into a community of creative mothers, holding space for flow, experimentation, and shared becoming.
YUG
Yug is a Singapore-based contemporary artist and the founder of driptych, an art studio focused on fluid abstraction. His practice draws inspiration from the natural world, and explores colour, flow, and movement through a quiet dialogue between material, gesture, and intuition. Each piece is shaped through a balance of structure and flow, where variation and emergence are embraced as part of the journey of creation. Through driptych, Yug creates contemplative works that invite viewers into moments of depth, stillness, and quiet discovery.
MEGAN WONOWIDJOYO
Megan Wonowidjoyo is a multimedia artist, researcher, and former lecturer at the Faculty of Cinematic Arts, Multimedia University. Her debut short Woman at Home (2017) was nominated for Best Short Film at the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival and later screened at the Kaohsiung Film Festival (2024). She has shown work in Memory & Rebirth (solo, 2022) and group exhibitions such as KL Art Fair (2023), Can She Do It? (2024), and Permulihan (2021). Her multimedia projects published in PR&TA explore memory, diaspora, and women’s lives. Recent films include Be Right There (2024) and Memulai Lagi (2025).
QIAO
Zhang Qiao is a multidisciplinary artist and independent scholar based in Singapore, with over a decade of experience across art, design, AI, and digital humanities research. He is the founder of ArchPlate, a home-based printmaking studio dedicated to developing eco-friendly electro-etching techniques—a safer and more sustainable alternative to acid-based printmaking.
VALENTINA CONCHIE
Valentina Conchie aka Vibrant Cuckoo, is a Singapore-based mixed media artist, curator, and photographer whose work constructs vivid symbolic worlds where myth, identity, and human values converge. Trained in medicine and shaped by a life across multiple cultures, she channels her experiences into a distinctive recognisable artistic language, a vocabulary she built herself, composed of colour, symbols, objects, and portraits. Through this language, she explores the complexities of contemporary womanhood and the stories we carry within us, creating profoundly emotional manifestos that speak loudly, unapologetically, and with bold energy. Originally from Moscow, Russia, Valentina has lived and worked in Singapore for the past eleven years. Recent exhibition highlights include Salon des Étrangers at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), solo exhibit at The Other Art Fair, Melbourne (2025) and solo presentation at The Art Taipei (2025).
NIHAL SHARIF
Nihal Sharif (b.1997,Singapore) is a Sculptor and a Painter of Indian descent pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Nanyang Academy of Fine arts. Working with a wide range of mediums such as acrylics, ceramics, found objects and natural materials. His artistic journey began with his late mother’s wish. Nihal draws inspiration from the rawness of nature, seeing parallels between its unpredictability and his own lived realities. His works involve direct bodily engagement with earth and environment, using gesture and material interaction to seek connection and meaning. His practice explores themes of loss, existence and universal human experiences. Through his art he aims to give hope to those broken ones.
SEROMAKHA EKATERINA
Ekaterina Seromakha is a Moscow-based science art artist inspired by ocean depths and cosmos. Her paintings blend realism and metaphor, capturing nature's colors, shapes, and textures through meditation-born visions. She directs viewers inward, expanding perception via macro/microcosms and marine biodiversity. Combining 7 years of art training with fisheries research, Ekaterina participated in freeing "whale prison" orcas/belugas, earning a Federal Fisheries diploma. Her work highlights ocean fragility, urging conservation.
Fri 30 Jan, 4–9 PM
SWATI SINGH
Swati is a Singapore-based abstract painter whose work is inspired by the city’s tropical landscapes. Trained at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), she primarily works with acrylic paint, incorporating natural pigments and drawing mediums such as pencil, charcoal, and oil pastel. Her paintings reflect a sensitivity to the textures, rhythms, and colors found in nature—translating the sensory richness of foliage, light, and atmosphere into an abstract language. Rooted in a curiosity about how nature shapes human perception, her practice explores the emotional and intuitive responses it evokes.
ANICIA KOHLER
Anicia Kohler is a multidisciplinary artist from Switzerland. Her main practices are music – she has a BA in jazz performance and studied writing for orchestra and film – and writing. Her music compositions for small and large ensembles as well as choirs have been performed and recorded in many countries. Extensive research on sociological subjects is always at the base of her work, which she then uses to create music, written text and visuals.
URMI ROY
As an artist she finds herself in constant learning and practicing mode. She works in various mediums and sometimes does mixed media as well. Urmi doesn't believe in restricting herself to one medium while creating art. Recently, she found herself drawn to expressive, abstract, modern landscapes. She enjoys sketching all over the city with her little sketch book. This gives her an opportunity to really observe her surroundings and learn more deeply about the people, cultures, weather, food, traffic and even the sounds.
JOLENE LIAM
Jolene Liam is a London-based artist and architect from Singapore. Her practice explores different ways of thinking about and describing the places around us, from everyday spaces to imagined internal landscapes. Working in the expanded, experimental field of drawing and painting enables Liam to find new ways of interrogating space, especially by searching for gaps between conventional methods of representation. The ‘in-between’ and the ‘not quite’ are her tools of choice, creating works that sit on the boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture. Liam recently completed the Off-Site Programme at Turps Art School, an artist-led painting programme.
SAKHUJA
Natasha Sakhuja Harris (she/her) known by the artist name SAKHUJA, is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist based in Singapore. As the founder & creative director of House of Harris and a former fashion designer, she brings a multifaceted creative background to her practice, seamlessly blending fine art, textiles, and design.
Natasha explores themes of diasporic identity, femininity, and the domestic realm. Her interdisciplinary work spans painting, textiles, animation, and often reflects the complexities of living between cultures and homes.
She has collaborated with renowned companies and brands including Disney, ABC Studios, Nickelodeon, Barbie, and Pop Mart. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally, and she was recently featured in Grazia Singapore for her creative practice and her role in the Wings of Art exhibition at Marina Square.
Natasha holds a BA in Psychology from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and has pursued specialized art education through Central Technical School (Toronto), Fine Arts at Sheridan College (Oakville), and Animation at Seneca Polytechnic (Toronto). Additionally, she has enriched her fashion knowledge through mentorship with Professor Henry Navarro at Toronto Metropolitan University and a fashion internship with Anju Modi in Delhi, India.
HUANG LI XIAN
Huang Li Xian majored in Interior design and worked as an Interior designer for more than ten years. She obtained a master's in fine arts from the China Academy of Art(CAA).
DESNANDO SARLIM
Desnando Sarlim is a contemporary visual artist, a watercolorist who also works with digital mediums to illustrate ideas and tells stories. Art-making is one of the ways in which he aims to make sense of and understand the world around him. The things he make often relates to memories and nuanced emotions that stem from his lived experience. To him, the art he creates is also a way for him to record both the tangible (objects) and the intangible (emotions) and preserve them. He graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from LASALLE College of the Arts, and was also a recipient of the Winston Oh Travelogue Award 2023.
Sat 31 Jan, 1–6 PM
RIKKI TURNER
VIVIEN LEE
Vivien Lee is a Singapore-born artist, writer, and bookbinder. Since 2007, she has developed a mixed-media practice combining acrylics, paper, and anything that takes her fancy. Her work, informed by a background in education and human development, explores questions of identity, purpose, and meaning through texture, movement, and mark-making. Time in nature nourishes her contemplative process, allowing her inner landscape to unfold visually. Vivien’s art invites viewers into reflection and deeper authenticity, offering hope and connection. Recent recognitions include being consecutively shortlisted for the UOB Painting of the Year in 2024 and 2025, and also for Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2025.
MACHI JU
Machi Ju is a Singapore-based multidisciplinary contemporary artist exploring mental health, memory, and identity through painting and sculptural forms. Her practice combines mixed-media canvases with her signature door sculptures, creating threshold-like spaces that reflect transition, resilience, and emotional interiority. Through layered processes and evolving surfaces, her work investigates how personal histories are carried, transformed, and re-rooted in new environments.
CARA SCHMITZ
Cara Schmitz‘s work centers around subtle gestures, in-betweens, translating, and connecting. She likes to carefully interact with her surroundings and tends to create modular installations and sculptures. Her works often have ephemeral qualities. She holds an MFA from the École des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, France.
APARNA CHAKRAVARTY
Aparna Chakravarty is a visual artist whose practice is informed by formal training in graphic design, illustration, and representational art. Later in life, she expanded her artistic vocabulary through professional training in Abstract Art at Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (NAFA). Having lived and worked in India and Singapore, she now focuses on painting and hands-on, process-driven approaches. Her practice moves fluidly between representation and abstraction, with a current emphasis on abstraction for the freedom it offers in exploration and expression. Drawing inspiration from nature, her work examines texture, colour, pattern, and layered surfaces to create depth, balance, and visual harmony.
JULIA WINTERS
Julia Winter is a Dutch artist in Singapore, with a long international career and multitude of group and solo exhibitions worldwide. Her work is a unique and individualistic visual vocabulary, creating a poetic and imaginative body of work. Winter’s art blends and juxtaposes differences, such as male-female, past-present, and guilt-innocence. She explores the transformative influence of time and awakening the past through fragments of memory. Winter’s work merges two personalities from different worlds, reflecting her theme of contrasting opposites. Winter is at the forefront of a new wave in art, having fresh perspective and mode of thought. She achieves this by seamlessly incorporating multimedia into her artistic expressions, making her a pivotal figure in the new edge.
KASS
Drawing inspiration from speculative themes of science fiction, ancient mythology, video games, board games, manuscripts, Kass creates alternate realms that expand the imagination and explore personal myths and contested archetypes. Her works carry a light-hearted sensibility, drawing on kitsch and kawaii aesthetics, often featuring semi-abstract, elusive entities.
Her latest preoccupation is the myth of the unicorn, a figure with countless narratives spanning from the European Middle Ages to contemporary culture. Kass reinterprets the unicorn through a local lens, likening it to universal consciousness while questioning its symbolic potential.