Preview of STPI Print Show & Symposium 2026
A Singapore Art Week Debut
Michael Craig-Martin, Seurat (green), 2022, Pigment print on Somerset Satin Photo Paper, 68 x 100 cm. © Michael Craig-Martin. Image courtesy of the artist and Cirstea Roberts Gallery, London.
The inaugural edition of The Print Show & Symposium Singapore will debut during Singapore Art Week, and run from 22 to 31 January 2026. Organised by STPI, the initiative is presented as a dynamic two-part showcase that seeks to emphasise the significance of printmaking within contemporary art. The first part is The Print Show which will feature an exhibition of prints from leading print publishers and galleries. It is held in tandem with a two-day Symposium titled The Politics of Print: elephant in the room curated by Stephanie Bailey, an artist, writer, and former curator of Conversations at Art Basel Hong Kong.
Seizing the current momentum where prints and multiples are gaining renewed focus in the art world, the STPI team led by Executive Director Emi Eu, has their sights set on establishing global connections through this platform. “The Print Show & Symposium Singapore connects artists, galleries, curators and audiences at a moment when prints and multiples occupy a vital part of the global art world and an artist’s practice,” says Eu. She elaborates, “Taking place at the heart of the thriving regional art ecosystem, the initiative is a celebration and an invitation for local and international communities to look, learn, and collect.”
At the same time, introducing The Print Show & Symposium Singapore to STPI’s calendar of events also makes strategic sense. Nathaniel Gaskell, Director, Exhibition Programming, STPI says, “This is an exciting initiative as it speaks so much to our history and DNA as an organisation.” He continues, “It is also a great starting point for our 2026 exhibitions calendar and sits well with our core values of collaborative innovation.”
Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Manet Luncheon on the Grass), 2019, archival pigment print on Innova rag paper, glass, 96 x 118 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Two Palms, NY.
Since this is the first edition of The Print Show & Symposium Singapore, one of the key considerations that the team has is finding ways to introduce new audiences to both the diversity and the continual innovation of printmaking. Through a range of prints from the mid-20th century to today, audiences will have the opportunity to understand how works cut across price points, geographies, and techniques.
With The Print Show, audiences can expect a range of works from 27 prominent contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Tacita Dean, Dinh Q. Lê, Kim Lim, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Hilmi Johandi and Irfan Hendrian. What is also distinctive about the showcase is STPI’s openness to experimentation. “For creative, commercial, and even environmental reasons, it is an interesting time to experiment with new formats for art fairs,” reflects Gaskell. “We are starting small and are curious to see how we can change things up, evolve, and not be tied down to an idea or format.”
Taking inspiration from existing print fairs that focus on programming, conversations, and the desire to communicate a shared love for the print medium, the team has woven The Print Show around visitor experience, in a bid to introduce them to important print works.
Natee Utarit, IT WOULD BE SILLY TO BE JEALOUS OF A FLOWER, 2025, serigraph on paper, 80 x 60.5 cm. © Natee Utarit / STPI. Image courtesy of the artist and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.
Further, The Print Show’s framework operates on an invite-only model with a selection of leading print publishers and galleries. They include Two Palms and Crown Point Press from the United States, BORCH Editions from Denmark/Germany, Cristea Roberts from the United Kingdom, as well as those from Asia-Pacific such as Ota Fine Arts (Singapore, Japan, China), de Sarthe (Hong Kong), and Richard Koh Fine Arts (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand).
The gallery space at STPI, where The Print Show will be held, has also undergone redesigning to facilitate organic movement and exchange. Gaskell explains, “We want to move away from an art fair booth format. Prints often call for closer viewing in more intimate spaces, and that is what we are encouraging with our concept of ‘exhibitions within exhibitions’.” Within these zones, both works with subtle and more pronounced affinities are grouped together to illuminate shared ideas and allow for visitors to better interact with them.
Gaskell provides an outline of the first room that the exhibition opens to, as an example of what this would look like. A work from Ethiopian American artist Julie Mehretu from BORCH Editions will be placed alongside another work from Indonesian artist Irfan Hendrian, represented by Sullivan+Strumpf. This coupling reveals both synergies in circulating ideas of migration and identity, while simultaneously highlighting their different approaches to layered abstraction. Gaskell expresses that these interchanges go on to seep into the rest of the showcase. He says, “These same ideas permeate and repeat throughout the show, through artists that make us think about how we live in and construct the world around us.”
Bernar Venet, Collapse/Arcs, 2025, polymer gravure with carborundum on Somerset textured white 300 gsm paper, 95.7 x 120.4 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
To complement the conceptual thrust of The Print Show is The Symposium, which will be held at 72-13, a gallery and theatre space that is just next to STPI. Consisting of six panels, it emphasises the wide multidisciplinary field within which printmaking currently operates. The discussion topics range from new technologies to debates around NFTs, as well as keynote conversations on equality and sustainability. In line with The Symposium’s subtitle, speakers and audiences are encouraged to think about “the elephant in the room” through these explorations that embody both points of convergence as well as rupture across borders, markets, and histories.
The broader cultural and artistic practices lined by these programmes reflects curator Stephanie Bailey’s practice that circuits transdisciplinary ideas and works. She will moderate the opening talk “The Politics of Print” which examines the broad sweep of how print has shaped modern and contemporary art across geographies and generations. Gaskell states, “With Singapore and the region as a nodal point of connection, researchers, artists, curators, and art professionals from across the world working within their respective areas in print will be brought together.” The roster of 25 speakers include museum directors, curators, and market leaders such as Kathleen Ditzig (Curator, National Gallery Singapore), Jenny Gibbs (Executive Director, IFPDA), Özge Ersoy (Executive Director, Asia Art Archive), as well as artists Pinaree Sanpitak and Bishal Yonjan.
Irfan Hendrian, Unearthly Matter 4, 2024, risography and dye cut on layers of paper, 56.2 x 68. 5 x 7.8 cm. Photography by Irfan Hendrian. Image courtesy of the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf.
With this strong starting point, the team at STPI hopes that the innovations at The Print Show & Symposium Singapore will continue to take root and bear fruit within both their gallery and across the ecosystem. A new editorial platform will be launched by STPI during the symposium titled print_screen, that will continue their collaboration with The Print Show & Symposium Singapore interlocutors through text-based projects. Their exhibitions calendar for 2026 also seeks to extend the discussions on printmaking established through this January programme. Where the Print Show introduces prints as a technique and medium, the year-long exhibitions trajectory will explore print alongside the adjacent worlds of multiples. In the pipeline for the gallery is an upcoming exhibition with artist Rirkrit Tiravanija which will examine his practice of editions as a conceptual device in and beyond printmaking. This will be followed by exhibitions with artists Eko Nugroho and Hyun-Mi Yoo later in the year, exploring the materiality of paper and the idea of paper as form. With a rigorous and expansive programme in place for the next year, collectors and arts practitioners can expect new potentialities to ripple from STPI to the larger art world in time to come.
The Print Show will run from 22 to 31 January 2026 at STPI. Admission is free. More information here.
The Symposium, The Politics of Print: elephant in the room will be held from 23 to 24 January 2026 at 72-13. For more information and to purchase your tickets, click here.
This article is presented in partnership with STPI.
