January in Singapore has become a season of recalibration. The city’s usual velocity gives way, briefly to a slower rhythm shaped by exhibitions, conversations, and encounters that extend well beyond gallery walls. With the opening of ART SG 2026, now in its fourth edition, that pause feels intentional. This is a fair increasingly interested not just in scale or spectacle, but in process, dialogue, and the conditions that allow art to be experienced as something humane and lived-in.

Held at Marina Bay Sands from 23 to 25 January, with a VIP preview on the 22nd, ART SG brings together more than 100 galleries from over 30 countries and territories. Yet the energy this year is less about accumulation and more about coherence. After several editions of rapid growth, the fair appears to have reached a moment of consolidation, one where ideas have had time to settle, conversations have had time to mature, and the ecosystem around it has learned how to speak to itself.

Throughout the week, that sense of reflection plays out in the way the fair is structured. There is a noticeable emphasis on exchange: discussions that unfold over time, opportunities for smaller group dialogue, and a porous approach to programming that invites questions rather than closes them off. ART SG feels less like a monologue and more like an ongoing conversation continuing beyond the exhibition halls.

The most significant shift this year is the first-ever integration of S.E.A. Focus within ART SG. Long established as a vital platform for Southeast Asian contemporary art, the National Arts Council–commissioned showcase now sits at the heart of the fair, rather than alongside it.

Curated by John Z.W. Tung with artistic consultation by Emi Eu, the presentation is framed by the theme The Humane Agency, positioning artists as active respondents to social, political, and emotional realities. Seen together, the works feel less declarative than propositional—offering ways of thinking, caring, and responding rather than fixed conclusions. There is a quiet clarity to the presentation, and a sense that the artworks are less concerned with spectacle than with how they might function within lived experience. This focus on humanity, on vulnerability, care, and interdependence, echoes throughout the fair, surfacing again in installations, performances, and even in the pacing of the visitor experience itself.

ART SG’s GALLERIES sector continues to balance international gravitas with regional grounding. Blue-chip galleries from Europe, the US, and East Asia present museum-calibre works alongside leading galleries from Singapore and across Southeast Asia. Rather than competing for attention, the booths feel deliberately calibrated, allowing space for close looking and sustained engagement.

The FUTURES sector, dedicated to younger galleries established within the last decade, reinforces this forward-looking ethos. Many of the presentations have been created specifically for ART SG, foregrounding experimentation and risk. The launch of the ART SG FUTURES Prize, presented by UBS, further underscores the fair’s investment in long-term artistic development rather than short-term visibility.

Meanwhile, South Asia Insights, a newly introduced pavilion supported by the TVS Initiative, expands the fair’s regional lens. Bringing together galleries and artists from across India and the South Asian diaspora, the presentation highlights practices shaped by history, movement, and contested narratives—adding another layer to the fair’s increasingly nuanced geography.

ART SG’s ambitions extend beyond the booth through the PLATFORM sector, which presents large-scale installations and site-specific works that slow the fair’s tempo. These are spaces designed for rest, contemplation, and bodily awareness—moments where the surrounding bustle recedes and the viewer is invited to linger.

This year also marks the introduction of a dedicated Performance Art sector, acknowledging practices that resist easy containment. Performances unfold intermittently, sometimes without announcement, drawing attention to presence, duration, and the unpredictability of live encounter. In doing so, they subtly challenge the transactional logic of the art fair format, replacing it with something more immediate and experiential.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait, ART SG’s off-site collaboration with Rockbund Art Museum. Over ten days, The Warehouse Hotel on Robertson Quay is transformed into an immersive exhibition environment, with artworks and performances activating lobbies, corridors, and social spaces.

The project reflects a broader interest in how art circulates through everyday settings. Even the hotel’s bar programme has been shaped by the exhibition’s themes, with cocktails developed in response to ideas of maritime movement, cultural exchange, and regional histories. Inspired by works such as Ming Wong’s Marys of the South Seas, familiar forms are reinterpreted through a Southeast Asian lens—lighter, more fluid, and attuned to place.

Rather than treating hospitality as a backdrop, the project positions it as part of the exhibition itself, blurring boundaries between viewing, dwelling, and participation.

Across Marina Bay Sands, ART SG is woven into the wider Where Art Takes Shape programme, with film screenings at ArtScience Museum, art-inspired dining, and a dense calendar of talks, performances, and partner activations. The result is not a single focal point but a constellation of experiences, allowing visitors to encounter art in fragments, conversations, and unexpected moments.

There is a sense this year that ART SG is no longer proving its relevance, but refining it. After several editions of growth, the fair appears more comfortable allowing space—for uncertainty, for discussion, for works that ask to be lived with rather than immediately understood.

In that way, ART SG 2026 feels less like an event chasing momentum and more like a city-wide pause—one that invites Singapore, and its visitors, to consider what contemporary art can offer when time, care, and attention are allowed to take root.

Photos Courtesy of ART SG

ART SG 2026 runs from 23th to 25th January 2026 at Marina Bay Sands Singapore. Tickets and more information available here