October 2026 Round-Up
Art Jakarta 2026, Whitestone Gallery, The Back Room, Liang Gallery, artcommune gallery, Vin Gallery, UOL X ART:DIS Art Prize 2025 and art bangkok 2026
Art Jakarta 2026
Venue entrance of Art Jakarta 2025. Image courtesy of Art Jakarta.
The upcoming edition of Art Jakarta will host 75 galleries — 33 arrive from overseas, and 19 are first-time participants. It will introduce a new section, SCOPE, which presents MTN Market, a platform highlighting emerging Indonesian art fairs and local art communities from outside of Jakarta. This edition also welcomes new Main Partners. AIA presents The Living Legacy, a collaboration with the batik maestro Iwan Tirta and Aesop brings its signature Aesop Women’s Library, an ongoing initiative that brings literature by female authors and local voices.
Art Jakarta 2026 runs from 2 to 4 October 2026 at JIExpo Kemayoran, Jakarta, Indonesia. More information here.
Counterweight: The Systems of Two
Ruobing & Sai, Eight Legged on Back (Green for Something series), 2014, used coffeeshop plastic chairs, 160 x 40 x 50cm. Image courtesy of Whitestone Gallery Singapore.
The exhibition centres on two Singapore artist couples: Stefen Chow and Huiyi Lin alongside Wang Ruobing and Chen Sai Kua Kuan. Curated by Tamares Goh, the show takes physics as its primary metaphor for shared life, casting each partnership as the point of balance on a lever. Chow and Lin turn rigorous research, raw data and everyday objects into precise visual forms, while Ruobing & Sai work by trial and error with residues and fragments gathered from their daily environment, the land and sea. For both, domestic life spills into the work, and the private unit becomes a means of navigating the world. Each duo is framed as a small system held steady within a larger, turbulent one.
Counterweight: The Systems of Two is on view from 16 August to 17 October 2026 at Whitestone Gallery Singapore, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore. More information here.
Missing from the Scene
Sharon Chin, Missing Actors series, 2026, linoprint on Kitakata paper, 37.5 × 28cm each. Images courtesy of Sharon Chin.
Missing from the Scene is Malaysian artist Sharon Chin’s first solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur since 2017, curated by Eric Goh. It features wayang kulit-style animal puppets, collagraph prints made from them, and linocut prints of their habitats, but with the animals absent. The title is a play on mise-en-scène, suggesting that absence is the setting of life today. The empty habitats point to the loss of biodiversity, while a live feed of an oil refinery’s flare stack, seen from Chin’s home in Port Dickson, forms their backdrop. The show is accompanied by a zine publication, featuring essays by Eric Goh, Azzad Diah and Nau Suter, along with a questionnaire, asking audiences: “What is missing from your scene?”
Missing from the Scene is on view from 26 September to 1 November 2026 at The Back Room, The Zhongshan Building, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Mirror Straits
Chu Wei-Bor, Breaking to Build (不破不立), 1997, mixed media, cotton, 138.5 x 92cm. Image courtesy of Liang Gallery.
Organised by Liang Gallery in Taipei and artcommune gallery in Singapore, Mirror Straits is a touring exhibition that brings together four artists from Taiwan and four from Singapore. Curated by Nobuo Takamori, the show first introduced Singaporean audiences to Taiwan’s modern masters in January. The Taipei edition brings together Singapore artists Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Wen Hsi, Tan Choh Tee and Wong Keen and Taiwan artists Yuyu Yang, Chi Wei-Bor, Chin Jun-Tso and Chen Ching-Jung. Taiwan and Singapore are both tropical islands, but their distinct colonial and post-war histories have shaped different forms of collective memory. The exhibition asks what narratives might emerge between two seemingly mirrored islands.
Mirror Straits is on view from 12 September to 8 November 2026 at Liang Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan. More information here.
Heirloom
Duong Thuy Nguyen, Songs for the Unremembered (film still), 2026, single-channel moving image, colour, sound, 15 min 06 sec, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of Vin Gallery.
Vietnamese artist Duong Thuy Nguyen’s exhibition, Heirloom, turns to a different kind of inheritance, one handed down across generations but never wanted. It is Agent Orange, known locally as chất độc màu da cam. Nguyen started from a question about carrying a history that began before her birth, yet it lives on in bodies, landscapes and family memory. Rooted in Nguyen’s research at the Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University, the show places new works alongside military maps, declassified documents, archival film and oral histories. At its centre is Songs for the Unremembered (2026), a new moving-image work that traces Agent Orange’s path from striped barrels to Vietnam’s forests.
Heirloom is on view from 19 September to 20 November 2026 at Vin Gallery, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Held in the Middle
Installation view of Held in the Middle, a solo exhibition by Christian Tan. Image courtesy UOL and ART:DIS.
Held in the Middle is the debut solo exhibition of artist and printmaker Christian Tan, the overall winner of the UOL X ART:DIS Art Prize 2025. Curated by John Tung, the exhibition brings together around 30 linocut prints that transform familiar, everyday objects—from cleaning tools like spray bottles and scrubbing brushes to chairs, workstations, and pop culture icons—into reflective visual studies. Drawing from Tan's personal experience as a cleaner, works such as Red Plumbing Set and Floor Scrubbing highlight the dignity and textures of physical labor. Shown alongside recurring motifs of seating and portraits of pop stars, the presentation balances the toil of work with the whimsy of leisure and rest, offering a glimpse into what holds the artist's attention.
Held in the Middle is on view from 1 to 11 October 2026 at Objectifs Centre, Singapore. More information here.
art bangkok 2026
Kanha Hul, Reflection, 2026. Image courtesy of the artist and Art Agenda.
Pawarest Choksaen, Morning Market, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist and Richard Koh Fine Art.
The inaugural art bangkok 2026 is hosted by the Thai Galleries Association (TGA) and co-hosted by The Cloud, with UOB as Lead Partner. It will take place from 7 to 11 October at Siam Paragon, across the NEX Hall and Art Jewel. There will be gallery presentations, specially curated exhibitions, museums and institutions, art care and stewardship, collector communities, talks, programmes and a dedicated VIP experience. Themed “The First Chapter”, the fair looks at collecting as the beginning of a relationship, when an artwork becomes meaningful to the individual, and represents the beginning of a lasting culture of living with and supporting the arts.
Altogether, there are 20 Thai and international galleries taking part. Richard Koh Fine Art will present five young Thai painters: Kanokpon Somchua, Kongsak Kampakdee, Natagon Khamkayprong, Pawarest Choksaen, and Pik Chaichit. Galeri Sasha will bring the works of Malaysian artists Fadhli Ariffin, Wong Perng Fey and Alya Hatta. Art Agenda is putting together a Southeast Asian art showcase with the works of Khayla Indiva (Indonesia), Hul Kanha (Cambodia), Geremy Samala (Philippines), Pham Huy Thong (Vietnam) and Vichit Nongnual (Thailand).
art bangkok 2026 takes place from 7 to 11 October at Siam Paragon. More information here.