About ATM18

Asia Triennial Manchester is Europe’s only Triennial dedicated to contemporary visual art on the theme of Asia. It is a festival of visual culture that not only celebrates Manchester’s diverse communities but also explores cultural, artistic and political debates of the 21st century.

For 2018, the central concern of the festival is one of identity. Our provocation for this edition who do you think you are? is a reframing of the ambiguous and impossible demand so often encountered by people of colour in a post-industrial, multi-cultural city in the UK, where are you from? The question invites artists to interrogate how narratives around Asian identities intersect with the present cultural preoccupation with the nature of identity, organised around dialectics of gender and sexuality; community and migration; technology and humanity.

ATM18 will open on the night of the 5 October, with an evening of performances at HOME, and will run for two weeks, offering a diverse programme of free performances and special events by contemporary visual artists at ATM partner venues across Greater Manchester, including a one-day symposium at The Whitworth.

With a focus on commissioning young and mid-career artists to explore socially engaged, participatory artistic practice, the Asia Triennial forges new, cross-cultural approaches to engaging audiences. It fosters international and local curatorial collaborations and new partnerships across the arts and communities.

ATM18 is happening in venues across Greater Manchester in October, comprising HOME, Manchester Craft and Design Centre, Manchester Cathedral, Castlefield Gallery, Gallery Oldham, Bury Art Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, The Holden Gallery, MMU Special Collections, the Whitworth, Manchester Museum, Alexandria Library, Portico Library and The Manchester Contemporary.