Welcome to the website of Asian Art Fund Scotland. We’re a Scottish charity best known for running the Asian Art Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe since 2014. The award winners from 2025 are below and we’re looking forward to Fringe 2026.

On this site you can find out more about the charity and the awards and apply to participate (it’s free). Please check out our Gallery for photos from 2025 and earlier years.

Firstly though here is our official list of winners and those “highly commended” from 2025. Well done to them all.

Lyndsey Jackson from the Fringe presented the awards along with Richard Lewis and Chelsea Zhou of Asian Art Fund Scotland, the charity which runs the awards. The awards have been running since 2014 and exist to bring Asian artists together at the Fringe and reward the best of them.

Winners – 2025 Asian Art Awards

Outstanding Show

Winner: Hahaha–Hamlet – Chai Wan Rabble (Hong Kong)

Highly Commended: 1Shoulder Pad: Galaxy Train, Japanese Musical Theatre (Japan)

Highly Commended: Practice of Zen – Theatre Ronin (Hong Kong)

Outstanding Production

Winner: Kanpur: 1857 – Niall Moorjani Storyteller and Pleasance (Scotland / India)

Highly Commended: 1457, The Boy at Rest – Poem and Star / Korean Season by GCC & AtoBiz (Korea)

Highly Commended: Relaxing and Balancing – Yin Yang – On/Off Theatre (Hong Kong)

Highly Commended: The Time Painter – ACC, ACCF, Haddangse / Korean Season by GCC and AtoBiz (Korea)

Outstanding Male Performer

Winner: Jeremy Rafal, The Boy from Bantay (Philippines / USA)

Highly Commended: Zheng Xiaofan Dance Theatre, PERSONALLERY 4.0 (China)

Highly Commended: Kumar Muniandy – Second Class Queer (Malaysia / UK / Germany)

Highly Commended: Eden Choi – Proust Effect (Korea) [1]

Highly Commended: Sanjay Lago – Love me Like a Chai Tea Latte (Scotland / India)

Outstanding Female Performer

Winner: Mayuri Bhandari – The Anti “Yogi” (USA / India)

Highly Commended: Dansa Rickshaw – Dance Ihayami (Scotland / India)

Highly Commended: Elisabeth Gunawan and KISS WITNESS – Stampin’ in the Graveyard (UK / Indonesia) Asian Arts Special Award – Joint Award (two winners)

GENDAI TOKYO (Japan) and Up-cycle Music, Creative Art (Korea)

Highly Commended: Afreena Islam-Wright – Lucky Tonight! (UK / Bangladesh)

Highly Commended: Chi-An Chen – Sole to Soul (Taiwan, China)

Outstanding Young Performer [Winner] 3

Winner: Shenzhen University School of Arts 201 Theatre Company – The Landscape of the Other Shore (China)

Highly Commended: Creative Group SSAK / Korean Season by GCC & AtoBiz – Dream Space (Korea)

Highly Commended: Jasmine Thien – I Dream in Colour (UK / China)

Award summary

Members of the Scottish Indian community were prominent among the winners of the 2025 Asian Art Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe on Tuesday 19^th August. In particular, the highly acclaimed “Kanpur: 1857”, written and co-performed by Edinburgh/London-based Niall Moorjani and showing at the Pleasance, won the award for Outstanding Production. Set at the time of the Kanpur uprising in India, this new play “comically satirises contemporary conflicts around gender, colonial violence, and making art in times of crisis”. The award was collected by the production’s musician, Sodhi from Glasgow. Shows by Sanjay Lago (Love me Like a Chai Tea Latte) and Dance Ihayami (Dansa Rickshaw) also won awards for Highly Commended performances. Sanjay is Scottish Indian while Dance Ihayami is “Scotland’s Indian dance company”. Like Sodhi, Sanjay is from Glasgow (“Ibrox, don’t judge me” he says).

Hahaha-Hamlet from Hong Kong, playing at the Paradise Green venue on George IV Bridge until Saturday, won the award for Outstanding Show. The award reviewers simply loved this “captivating reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic tale, blending original musical with dark humour [..and..] intertwining the struggles of contemporary Hongkongers with Hamlet’s timeless tale”. Energetic, inventive and incredibly affecting with some reviewers moved to tears as the tales of Hamlet and Hong Kong coincided at the end. The whole cast were in attendance to receive the award [red and black t-shirts under their clothes] and they were delighted.

Mayuri Bhandari of the Anti “Yogi” (Indian / Californian) took home the award for Outstanding Female while Jeremy Rafal won Outstanding Male for The Boy from Bantay “a heartwarming journey of growth and self-discovery”. Mayuri was in attendance with her percussionist Neel Agrawal while Jeremy sent a video message to the audience. Both shows were hugely popular. At the Anti “Yogi” the audience were invited to “Join Mayuri Bhandari and Kali, the Goddess of Death every day as they navigate the absurdities of Western Yoga culture. Liberation, not Lululemon!”

The Outstanding Youth Performance was won by the show “Landscape of the Other Shore” from Shenzhen University which was also inspired by a European classic: Géricault’s painting and Georg Kaiser’s play The Raft of the Medusa.

The Asian Arts Special Award was shared between GENDAI TOKYO and Up-cycle Music by Creative Art of Korea. GENDAI TOKYO have a simply incredible laser show playing at WU Asia Pacific until Sunday while Up-cycle Music is a “response to climate change from a uniquely artistic perspective. They use waste to make music – cellos from abandoned equipment from rural areas, stringed instruments of thrown away plastic toys – and compose piano songs based on the characteristics of endangered animals, to ask vital questions about the climate crisis”.

Group photograph credit: Matt Sime.