A yellow broom, a red plumbing set and a floor scrubber won printmaker Christian Tan the S$20,000 grand prize at the UOL X ART:DIS Art Prize 2025. Now those same cleaning tools anchor Held in the Middle, his first solo exhibition, which opens to the public at Objectifs on Middle Road from 1 to 11 October 2026 with free admission.
The show gathers about 30 linocut prints, and the cleaning gear is one thread among several, because the walls hold chairs, a rocking chair and bold portraits of Jon Bon Jovi and Roxette too. With no ticket to buy, it’s one of the easiest art dates to fit into a long lunch or a lazy Saturday in town.
Who Is Christian Tan?
Christian, born in 1994, is an autistic artist and printmaker with ART:DIS (Arts & Disability) Singapore, a non-profit that has championed learning and livelihood opportunities for persons with disabilities through the arts since 1993. He took up linocut printmaking in 2019, which means carving an image into linoleum and printing it onto paper, and in the years since he has built a look you could spot from across a room: thick outlines, loud colour and zero fuss.
He works across wet and dry techniques and leans on reduction printing, stacking his images in layers so each print carries a quiet depth beneath that punchy surface. In a statement for the launch, Christian explained his approach with disarming simplicity: “I enjoy making linocut prints and drawing things I see and like. I hope visitors will look at these familiar things in a new way.”
The exhibition title, Held in the Middle, comes from his habit of placing a single familiar object at the centre of the composition. It’s a simple move with a big payoff, because a broom you’d walk past a hundred times a day suddenly has nowhere to hide.
Three Prints From the Cleaning Shift
The prize-winning trio, Red Plumbing Set, Yellow Broom and Floor Scrubbing, draws directly on Christian’s experience working as a cleaner. Each gives a tool most of us notice only when it’s in the way a whole sheet of paper to itself.
The first two measure 297 x 420mm and the third turns sideways at 420 x 297mm, and each gives a tool most of us notice only when it’s in the way a whole sheet of paper to itself. This is the part of the show worth slowing down for. Singapore runs on the people who mop the kopitiam (neighbourhood coffee shop) floor before breakfast and clear office bins after everyone has gone home, yet their tools almost never get a spotlight like this in a gallery. Christian renders them with the care of someone who has held them day after day, and the dignity in these prints feels earned rather than applied from the outside.
Cleaning Station (Pink) (420 x 300mm) is another work in the show. Curator John Tung summed up the show’s balance neatly, saying that in Christian’s work “the toil of labour is blended with the whimsy of leisure.” That’s about as good a one-line review as anyone could write.
Bon Jovi, Roxette and a Rocking Chair
Then the mood softens. The chair prints, including Urban Chair and A Rocking Chair, usually leave the seat empty, so each one feels as though someone stepped away a moment ago and might be back soon. Hung near the cleaning tools, they read as the other half of a working day: the break, the wait, the sit-down you’ve been counting on since 3pm.
And then comes the fun stuff. Jon Bon Jovi – Blaze of Glory ’94 and Roxette – Joyride turn two of Christian’s musical favourites into bold graphic portraits, and they offer a peek at what fills his quiet hours once the mop is put away. Anyone raised on a parent’s car-radio playlist will clock these faces instantly, and they’re the prints most likely to end up on your Instagram story!
UOL Group Chief Executive Liam Wee Sin compared Christian’s work to Andy Warhol, who “famously elevated everyday, mass-market goods, like the Campbell’s Soup can, into the realm of high art.” The comparison lands, with one difference worth noticing. Warhol’s soup cans were about things everybody bought, while Christian’s brooms and pop idols come from his own shifts and his own record collection, which makes them far more personal.
From 570 Entries to Middle Road
UOL, the Singapore-listed property and hospitality group, launched the UOL X ART:DIS Art Prize in 2023 to mark its 60th anniversary and to back artists with disabilities at different stages of their practice. The biennial prize’s second edition in 2025 drew more than 570 submissions, up from over 300 the first time round, and named 18 winning artworks from a S$52,000 total prize pool. As overall winner, Christian received the S$20,000 grand prize plus the chance to stage this solo show, the largest presentation of his practice to date.
Guest-of-Honour Denise Phua, Mayor of Central Singapore District and Member of Parliament (MP) for Jalan Besar Group Representation Constituency (GRC), launched the exhibition, saying his work “shows how art can help us see familiar things in new ways.” She added that she looks forward to following his artistic journey in the years ahead.
That journey is already moving at pace. In January 2026, his work was commissioned for Next Stop: Together!, a Singapore Art Week public art project installed at HarbourFront MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station, so his art met the commuting public well before this debut. UOL plans for his pieces to join the 469 works by ART:DIS artists at its NoMad hotel on Orchard Road, which the group says will open later this year with more than 1,500 newly commissioned artworks.
Before You Go
Opening hours, according to UOL, are 12pm to 7pm from Tuesday to Saturday and 12pm to 4pm on Sunday, with the gallery closed on Mondays and public holidays. The last day, 11 October, falls on a Sunday with that earlier 4pm close, so don’t leave your visit for the final afternoon. Our advice is to start with the cleaning trio, linger by the empty chairs and save Bon Jovi for last, because the room makes more sense when you walk it from work to rest to play.
If you enjoyed how Teo Eng Seng’s solo exhibition turned discarded materials into art, Held in the Middle runs on a similar instinct, finding beauty in what the rest of us overlook. It sits on a much smaller scale than the booths at ART SG 2025, and that intimacy is exactly its charm.
🗓️ Date: 1 to 11 October 2026
⏰ Time: Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 7pm; Sunday, 12pm to 4pm; closed on Mondays and public holidays
📍 Location: Objectifs, 155 Middle Road, Singapore 188977
💰 Price: Free admission
🔗 Details: UOL X ART:DIS Art Prize page on UOL’s website
Pencil in a visit to Objectifs before the doors close on Sunday, 11 October. For more on the artworks and the prize, head to the UOL X ART:DIS Art Prize page on UOL’s website, and keep an eye on ART:DIS Singapore to see where Christian Tan’s bold, big-hearted prints turn up next!
Photos and Visuals courtesy of UOL and ART:DIS.
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