About

NOVEMBER 4th – DECEMBER 4th 2025

The sixth edition of Asia Triennial Manchester has been curated by Hongjohn Lin, Henk Slager, Miya Yoshida, Kalen Lee, and Yusaku Imamura. This curatorial assembly has realised the multivenue exhibition and research project ‘Transvaluation’, hosted by the Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. To transvalue means to transgress the logic of value and the systemic structures it legitimises. The triennial brings together a diverse body of works by more than 30 international practitioners, which commune in their creation of new ways to think about value, extending beyond economic value, efficiency and utility to establish new conceptions of social, sexual, gender, ecological, indigenous and decolonial relations. The triennial also seeks to question and complicate the symbolic, cultural, political and poetic values associated with Asia today.

Manchester is an apt site for this edition’s critical inquiry. As one of the historical cradles of capitalism, industrial modernity and communism — the city in which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels famously came together to theorise revolution — it holds symbolic weight in any reconsideration of value. Engels’s ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ (1845) remains a powerful document testifying to industrial violence, urban transformation and social precarity. Informed by the climate catastrophe, the triennial further investigates how the conditions of the Anthropocene complicate the ways in which value is attributed and shared across human, animal, and non-human systems.

ATM was established in 2008 by Alnoor Mitha, and has since been dedicated to exhibiting and engaging with contemporary art from Asia and its diaspora. ATM6 is hosted and supported by the Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, and will take place for a month from Tuesday 4th November to Thursday 4th December 2025 at the University’s Poetry Library, the Holden and Modal galleries. It will also extend into the city, through partnerships with the Manchester Art Gallery, esea contemporary, and the arts centre HOME. Alongside the multi-venue exhibition, a film festival celebrating the work of groundbreaking filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang will include screenings and an in-conversation with the Director. A partner exhibition by Marcos Kueh at esea contemporary and running in parallel to the triennial has also included the co-commissioning of a new work by the artist with esea contemporary, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT), Hong Kong SAR. Throughout the month-long duration of ‘Transvaluation’, a programme of artist performances and public events held at Manchester School of Art and partner organisations will be held across the city. To take part in these events, most of which are free, please book via our events page here.

Alongside the exhibition, an international collective of doctoral students has formed Research Jam, providing a discursive and intergenerational platform at the heart of the triennial which will activate the arches at HOME from Monday 27th October to Friday 31st October. This week of events acts as precursor to the triennial and a call to emergent artists, students and younger people in Manchester to explore the many themes, questions and contexts central to the triennial. To take part in these free events, please book via our events page here.

Throughout the month-long duration of ‘Transvaluation’, an extensive programme of artist performances and public events will take place at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Met, and partner cultural organisations across the city. A public symposium on 6th November will explore critical inquiries and artistic practices central to ATM6.

ATM6 artists: Tiong Ang & Company (Andreea David, Kexin Hong, Ingrid Sanghee Edwards’ Diego Ferrari, Li Xiangdong, Jan Yongdeok Lim, Changli Cui Luo, Andrés Novo, Heekyung Ryu, Xu Wang Sophia); Chien-Chi Chang; Ting-Tong Chang, Yang Ah Ham; Shur-Tzy Hou; Chia-Wei Hsu; Yi-Ting Hsu; Dondon Houmwm; Stephanie Misa; Ziliä Qansurá; Tsai Ming-liang; Stefanos Tsivopoulos; Wei-Cheng Tu, Yu-Chen Wang, We Are Komachi (Jeffrey Angels, Sae Esashi, Hiromi Ito, Yuko Kaseki, Tomoko Mori, Kanoko Nishi) and Jui-Chung Yao.

Curatorial Assembly: Hongjohn Lin, Henk Slager, Miya Yoshida, Kalen Lee, Yusaku Imamura, Sarah James and Anna Bergqvist.

Exhibition Team: Adam Butler, Technical Manager; Clare Chun-yu Liu, Research Associate; Angie Chia-Lin Lee, Assistant Convener; Vera Mey, Curatorial Research Fellow, and Laura Peters, Senior Faculty Planning and Operations Manager.

Venues: The Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Art; The School of Digital Arts’ (SODA) Modal Gallery; Grosvenor East’s main reception; the Link Gallery, and the Poetry Library – all located at Manchester Metropolitan University’s All Saints Campus on Manchester’s Oxford Road.

Partners: esea contemporary; HOME; Manchester Art Gallery; Castlefield.

For further enquiries please contact: press@mmu.ac.uk