iMUDEC Museo delle CultureTortona / Porta Genova
Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year: Charmaine Poh
This exhibition has ended.
First Italian solo show by Singaporean artist Charmaine Poh: video, photography and performance on memory, identity, power and digital visibility.
Museum websiteMore in Milan
A Windows startup chime plays and a twelve-year-old girl appears on screen. She is E-Ching, the character Charmaine Poh played on a Singapore children's detective series in the early 2000s, rebuilt as a deepfake from YouTube clips. She talks about strangers' comments on her body, glitches as she speaks, and signs off: "To all the little girls, may we all win."
This is Poh's first solo show in Italy, the prize show for Deutsche Bank's 2025 Artist of the Year, in MUDEC Photo. The centrepiece is The Moon is Wet, a 24-minute, three-screen video tying the sea goddess Mazu to the Majie, domestic workers who migrated from southern China, and to an Indonesian domestic worker in Singapore today.
You'll be watching more than looking here: the two main videos run 24 and 14 minutes. Entry is free, Thursdays run to 22:30, last entry is an hour before closing, and it ends on 1 November.
Look for
E-Ching's broadcast in Good Morning Young Body
Look for the deepfake of Poh at twelve presenting a news-style broadcast that keeps breaking up, her body flickering and her voice distorting.
The three screens of The Moon is Wet
Look for mangroves, data centres, reclaimed coastline and the financial district passing across three screens while the stories of Mazu, the Majie and a domestic worker run alongside.
The queer couples' video from Venice
Look for the 14-minute video, first shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale, in which queer couples in Singapore talk about wanting children and building families of their own.
Heavy is the root of light
Look for the 2025 light installation where projections carry fragments of Poh's poetry through the space.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
Skip if
You want paintings or objects: this is mostly video, and the centrepiece alone runs 24 minutes.
Also at MUDEC Museo delle Culture
On now nearby
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Image credits
7
- MUDEC Museo delle CultureDamianoMartinoPhoto / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025: Twenty Years of Haute CoutureCourtesy of Armani/Silos
- Under Milano: Imaginary mapsCourtesy of Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci
- Artemisia Gentileschi. AnnunciazioneCourtesy of Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini
- Armani/SilosAnna Bombińska / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da VinciMuseo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria MartiniTrotter Christie / Wikimedia Commons, CC0