6th Asia Triennial Manchester

DURATION: 2025-11-04 ~ 2025-12-04
VENUE: Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester Poetry Library, plus esea contemporary, HOME; Manchester Art Gallery.
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ATM6 – Transvaluation
The sixth edition of Asia Triennial Manchester (ATM6) 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 Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. The curatorial framework of the triennial is ‘transvaluation’. 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, 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’ ‘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 as Europe’s only contemporary art event 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 Ming-Liang Tsai will include screenings and an in-conversation with the Director. esea contemporary will present a partner exhibition, 'Marcos Kueh: Smooth Sailing, 一路順風', which debuts an immersive textile installation work, co-commissioned by esea contemporary, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT), Hong Kong SAR.

Alongside the triennial, an international collective of doctoral students has formed Research Jam – a discursive and intergenerational platform at the heart of ‘Transvaluation’ 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, young people, and local audiences to explore the many themes, questions and contexts central to it.

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