Ah Ma's Kitchen

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2016, Oil on canvas, 92 x 122 cm

 

UOB Painting of the Year,

Silver Award (Established Artist Category)

UOB Art Collection

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Conceived while researching his familial history, Yeo Tze Yang’s 2017 painting of his grandmother’s kitchen explores the deep emotional ties between memory and space. Having lived in this old Singaporean public flat since the 1970s, the artist's grandmother transformed the interior into a physical extension of herself. Through the slow accumulation of things—cloths pegged to railings, objects organized in baskets—the kitchen functions as an intimate, surrogate portrait of its matriarch.

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Though deeply rooted in the local vernacular of Singapore’s older estates, this painting has become a cultural touchstone, widely celebrated for its universal emotional resonance. By treating a simple, banal kitchen with monumental artistic gravity, Yeo demonstrates how the most unassuming and ordinary spaces can trigger a profound, global sense of home, nostalgia, and shared humanity.