A flower made of hearts wins South-east Asia’s top UOB painting prize

[SINGAPORE] At first glance, Tang Kok Soo’s A Big Flower appears to be a field of tiny marks, punctuated by pink, red and green. Look longer and the geometry dissolves, suggesting a giant bloom rising from a single flowerpot instead.

That delicate play between order and abandon has won the 51-year-old Singaporean artist the 2026 UOB Southeast Asian Painting of the Year award, as well as the Singapore title.

Made with graphite, ink and collage on paper, A Big Flower uses grids, repetition and countless tiny hearts to explore the distance between reality and perception.

Each heart radiates a halo. And for Tang, the painstaking act of returning to each single mark became a form of meditation.

Tang, who previously won a Gold Award in the competition’s Established Artist category in 2016 for Elephants Crossing the Water, is now in contention with national winners from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for a UOB-sponsored residency at Paris’ Cite Internationale des Arts.

The regional prize was announced recently at National Gallery Singapore, at a ceremony attended by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

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Meanwhile, Wong Yik Knee, 50, won Singapore’s Most Promising Artist award in the Emerging Artist category.

Her oil painting Echoes of Belonging depicts worn containers inscribed with names, turning ordinary objects into repositories of memory. Where Tang finds expansiveness in repetition, Wong locates human connection in traces left by use.

At the awards ceremony, UOB and the National Arts Council also renewed their partnership for three years, with the bank pledging S$5 million to the council’s Sustain the Arts Fund.

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The agreement will support artist residencies, professional exchanges and showcases of South-east Asian art, including during Singapore Art Week.

Now in its 45th year, UOB Painting of the Year has recognised more than 1,000 artists across the region.

The winning works are on display at National Gallery Singapore’s Concourse Gallery until Jan 31, 2027 – a fitting setting for Tang’s proposition that the smallest gesture, repeated with conviction, can become monumental.