Asia Triennial Manchester 11
1st October – 27th November 2011
Asia Triennial Manchester 11
8 weeks, 17 venues, 13 countries, 40 artists and 25 new commissions: Art, Film & Events across the city.
The UK's only Asian art triennial opens 1st October – 27th November 2011 in Manchester, with a vibrant and exciting showcase of current contemporary visual art and craft from Asia.
Asia Triennial Manchester 11 (ATM11), initiated and led by Shisha, is a festival of visual culture that features a series of exhibitions, commissions and interventions by 40 international and UK artists exploring the theme of Time and Generation, presenting new site-specific work alongside work not seen before in the UK, and challenging stereotypical viewpoints of contemporary Asian artistic practice.
Exciting new commissions include:
-
Recognised for her sculptures that appropriate household objects and the decorative crafts of her home city of Karachi, ATM11 has commissioned a new work, Drained (2011) by Adeela Suleman to be shown in Manchester Cathedral. In this piece Suleman alludes that matter, life and even faith, can slip away. A seductive vanitas, the work curves and glistens, capturing its viewers’ own reflections and leading their eyes into its centre. Although Suleman has worked with drain covers in her practice before, in this piece the function of her object is re-described across the sculpture itself. The unnerving disappearance of water as it spins down a drain is replicated by this circular maze with the work’s shape reminiscent of the circular mazes that pattern the floors of some Christian churches – inviting the congregation to slowly follow their patterns to the middle while meditating upon the profound along the way.
-
The International 3 is working with performance artist Enkhbold Togmidshiirev from Mongolia. Raised in a nomadic family that has been breeding horses for generations, he now teaches at Ulaanbaatar’s Institute of Fine Arts. For his performances, Enkhbold uses his own scaled down, self-built version of a ger, the traditional Mongolian mobile circular living structure. Hosted initially by Manchester Museum and then by Islington Mill, he will move his ger from site to site using performance to reveal and reflect on his heritage, its culture and traditions in relation to the contexts in which he finds himself.
-
Indian artist N S Harsha has produced Thought Mala or “spiritual garlands” to be worn by visitors in the Victorian Gothic splendour of The John Rylands Library. The artist intends them to transform the library into a spiritual place full of ritual, as visitors borrow the garlands as they would a book, wearing them, handling them or simply contemplating them.
-
ATM11 has also commissioned Devika Rao, a prominent British-based Indian classical dancer to devise a specific dance piece responding to N S Harsha’s garlands at the launch.
