Pinay wins $10,000 prize at Singapore art fair

January 25, 2026 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — While ghost projects and vampire contractors continue to horrify the general public, one Filipina artist’s “aswang” (witch) paintings have just brought home the gold at Art Singapore.

Marigold Santos, a 44-year-old Filipina mother of one, scooped up the first-ever “Art SG Futures Prize” at the prestigious Singapore art fair.

Art SG, short for Art Singapore, is the region’s largest art fair with over 100 galleries on its roster. It is an important global gateway to Southeast Asian contemporary art and attracts collectors from all over the world.

The award is presented by Swiss banking giant UBS, which has been a founding and lead partner of the fair since its inception. The newly-launched prize comes with a whopping $10,000 prize or almost P600,000.

Santos’ 16 award-winning works – painted in ink on hand-marbled paper – were nearly sold out even before the announcement of her win. The paintings depict curvaceous witches dancing. The artworks measure slightly more than legal-sized bond paper and are priced at $2,500 each. The pieces are part of her “Shroud Transfiguration” series.

The series on shape-shifting, blood-sucking witches called aswang was riveting and unique enough to propel her to be named “most outstanding emerging artist” featured in the special “Futures” section of the fair.

Three international jurors selected Santos from a field of 37 other artists contending in this category.

Reflecting the Filipino artist’s worldwide acceptance, Santos is represented not by a Philippine outfit but by Toronto-based gallery Patel Brown, which has carried Santos since 2019, when it first opened its doors.

Santos is part of the Filipino diaspora and migrated to Canada with her family when she was just seven years old. She received formal art training in Calgary, where she now lives. This artist believes that it is part of her personal artistic commitment to pass on what she terms “fierce legacies” to fellow Filipinos wherever they may be in the world, combining ancestral memory with a quest for modern identity.

Art SG officially opened to the public on Jan. 23 and runs until today at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Center. Magnus Renfrew, co-founder of the art platform, presented the award at simple ceremonies.