Artist Talk | Britta Färber and Charmaine Poh | Finissage

On the recommendation of Stephanie Rosenthal, director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, Deutsche Bank named artist Charmaine Poh “Artist of the Year” 2025, writing: "Born in 1990, the Singaporean-Chinese artist and documentary filmmaker divides her time between Singapore and Berlin. In her work, she deals with topics such as identity and empowerment, but also the visibility and invisibility of queerness and femininity in Asia. At the same time, her work is inspired by Eastern philosophy, media criticism, and the idea of cyberfeminism." Since September of this year, Charmaine Poh has been showing her first institutional exhibition at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin.

On the occasion of the group exhibition “Mysterious Travels,” Britta Färber talks about Charmaine Poh's series of six video stills, exhibited for the first time worldwide in Munich, which were created in the context of her three-channel video work “The Moon is Wet” (on view at Berlin's PalaisPopulaire until February 23, 2026). The conversation will focus on the multifaceted themes of her artistic practice: the tension between tradition and modernity, cycles in nature and the economy, and the significance of migration, feminism, and queerness, condensed in the fates of three women in three historical and contemporary contexts. Other topics include the concepts of Daoism and cyberfeminism, the journey inward, biography—between worlds—between Berlin and Singapore—of pausing and water, and of The Young Body Universe.

As Global Head of Art & Culture at Deutsche Bank, Britta Färber and her team develop the content of this global program. This includes the Deutsche Bank Collection as well as the Artist of the Year award, for which she has curated exhibitions with artists such as Koki Tanaka, Victor Man, LuYang, La Chola Poblete, and most recently Charmaine Poh, which have been shown at Deutsche Bank's own exhibition space in Berlin as well as in various museums across Europe.

Britta Färber is also responsible for the artistic side of the collaborations with the Frieze Art Fair in London, New York, Seoul, and Los Angeles, where she plays a key role in shaping the Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award and the Curatorial Fellowship in the UK.

Britta Färber studied art history, literature, film, and media studies in Kiel and Frankfurt, graduating with a M.A. in art history. Before joining Deutsche Bank, she gained professional experience at various cultural institutions and media outlets, as well as working as an editor for a Frankfurt city magazine, and as freelance art critic and art educator.