Amidst the over 100 galleries and 500 artists at Art Central, where should you focus your attention? The answer lies in the fair's debut curated sector: "Central Stage."
From March 25 to 29, the cornerstone of the city's annual Art Month returns to Central Harbourfront with a presentation of contemporary artworks and curated programs from pioneering local and regional galleries, alongside mid-career and established artists from across Asia and beyond.
Under the direction of curator Enoch Cheng, the art spectacle this year introduces "Central Stage" -- a brand-new section spotlighting six artists hailing from diverse backgrounds. These are not just emerging names; they are creators who have recently gained institutional recognition, including participation in major international exhibitions and recurring large-scale shows, as well as significant public commissions, acquisitions, and awards.
From Tokyo street interventions to South African geometric heritage, here is your roadmap to the six artists defining the inaugural "Central Stage":
SIDE CORE is an art collective founded in 2012 in Tokyo by Sakie Takasu, Tohru Matsushita and Taishi Nishihiro, with Kazunori Harimoto as video director.
Working across public installations and spatial interventions, the collective examines the circulation of messages in urban and communal spaces, informed by the histories and aesthetics of street culture.
Following presentations at the Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art and the 8th Yokohama Triennale, their practice is now the subject of a major exhibition at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, running through March 2026.
Born in Tehran and currently based in Colorado, Elnaz Javani works across textiles, sculpture, and drawing, examining the entanglements of personal and cultural memory, migration, and identity.
Her accolades include the 2025 Terra Foundation for American Art Grant, New Voices 2024 at Print Centre New York, and recognition as one of Chicago's Breakout Artists of 2022 by Newcity Chicago.
She has exhibited internationally across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, with presentations at major institutions including the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid, and Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles, among others.
Vilnius-based artist Marta Frėjutė develops installations, sculptural objects, and research driven image practices that examine how fiction and memory structure everyday experience within shifting historical contexts.
Her work has been presented internationally at leading institutions such as the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) Vilnius, the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, and the Museum of Physics in Naples, alongside exhibitions at experimental project spaces such as Lokomotif and SODAS 2123. Frėjutė currently leads a multi-year public programme connecting contemporary artists with seniors at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius
Since the 1980s, Arahmaiani's practice has grappled with contemporary politics, gendered power inequalities, and cultural commodification through performance, installation, and community‑based collaboration.
Arahmaiani has exhibited widely at major institutions and biennials, including Tate Modern (London), the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the National Gallery Singapore, the Istanbul Biennial, the Gwangju Biennale, and documenta fifteen (Kassel).
Born and based in Mpumalanga, South Africa, Esther Mahlangu is celebrated for her bold geometric abstractions rooted in Ndebele cultural knowledge. Painting across an expansive range of surfaces, her practice reanimates ancestral visual systems within contemporary art and design.
Dr. Mahlangu has exhibited internationally at major institutions, including the British Museum (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Born in Helsinki and based in Massachusetts, Arno Rafael Minkkinen is known for black‑and‑white self‑portraits that investigate the relationship between the human body and the natural world. His images draw on intuition, chance, and physical risk as integral elements of his process.
In 2025, Minkkinen was named the recipient of the Académie des Beaux-Arts Photography Award, William Klein. His work has entered the permanent collections of MoMA (New York), the National Gallery of Finland (Helsinki), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.
