Exhibition Preview 'Thresholds of Becoming'

Join us for the Thresholds of Becoming preview at esea contemporary for our 40th anniversary as six artists explore transitional ecologies.

Join us for the preview of Thresholds of Becoming at esea contemporary. Marking the organisation’s 40th anniversary in 2026, this new group exhibition brings together six artists whose practices probe the architectures of transition and the fragile ecologies of the in-between: Nicole Coson, Xin Liu, Charmaine Poh, Minoru Nomata, Yang Yongliang, and Yin Aiwen.

Curated by esea contemporary Director, Xiaowen Zhu, the exhibition understands transformation as a restless process of reconfiguration — of meaning, of material, of the bonds that hold us together and the fractures that pull us apart. The exhibition positions mutation and instability not as failures, but as generative states through which new worlds might be glimpsed.

‘From our beginnings as a grassroots Chinese Visual Arts Festival to our evolution into an artist-run space and later a National Portfolio Organisation, our history reflects continual transformation. Our revisioning in 2022 and reopening in 2023 reaffirmed our commitment to supporting artists of East and Southeast Asian heritage while imagining new forms of cultural work. This exhibition gathers practitioners who embrace instability as a generative force, inviting us to consider how relationships, uncertainties and acts of care might guide the futures we create together.’

— Xiaowen Zhu, Director, esea contemporary

The works in Thresholds of Becoming frame transformation as a condition both intimate and planetary — enacted through bodies, materials, infrastructures, and imagined futures. Each artist offers a distinct vocabulary for navigating the unstable architectures of the present, where collapse and renewal coexist. Collectively, the exhibition asks: What becomes possible when transformation is approached not as crisis but as a structural condition of the present? How might emergent relations, infrastructures, and imaginaries assemble themselves within — and because of — the unstable terrains we inhabit?

Advance booking for this free event is recommended due to limited capacity.

The exhibition has received generous support from Arts Council England, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, University of Salford Art Collection, Public Gallery, White Cube, Silverlens, Palais Populaire, and all participating artists.

About Nicole Coson

Nicole Coson (b. 1992, Manila) is a Filipino artist based in London. Working across printmaking and sculpture, Coson examines how images mediate memory, history and material culture. She translates symbolic, often vernacular objects into negative impressions via the etching press, producing canvases that oscillate between pattern, surface and depth. Embracing opacity as an aesthetic and political strategy, her work resists fixed readings of identity, foregrounding the critical potential of visual obfuscation. Through these shifting thresholds of visibility, Coson reflects on looking, legibility and the intimate architectures of what remains partially concealed.

About Xin Liu

Xin Liu (b. Xinjiang) is a London-based artist and engineer. Liu’s practice explores the entropic afterlives of scientific and technological aspiration, tracing the debris, exhaust and metabolic transformations that shape infrastructures of progress. Working across sculpture, moving images and research-led installation, she investigates cryogenic vessels, dissolving plastics, falling rocket fragments and self-monitoring satellites—phenomena she frames as Cosmic Metabolism. Her institutional solo exhibitions include Seedlings and Offspring at Pioneer Works, New York, and At the End of Everything at Artpace, San Antonio. She has been commissioned by institutions including Hyundai Art Lab, Moody Center for the Arts, Artnet, BMW Culture Group, and M+ Museum. Her work has been exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale, Thailand Biennale, MAXXI in Rome, MoMA PS1, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Hammer Museum, among others. Forthcoming projects include a solo exhibition at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

About Charmain Poh

Charmaine Poh (b. 1990, Singapore) is an artist working between Berlin and Singapore. Through film, photography, performance and media, Poh examines visibility, care and queer embodiment across Asian contexts. Her work considers how identities are formed, negotiated or withheld, engaging opacity, futurity and practices of repair. Recent projects explore kinship, intergenerational memory and the entanglements of nature, technology and the body, often combining documentary techniques with staged gestures and speculative imagery. A co-founder of the independent magazine Jom and member of the Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research, Poh was named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year 2025 and participated in the 60th Venice Art Biennale.

About Minoru Nomata

Minoru Nomata (b. 1955, Tokyo) is a painter based in Tokyo. Nomata studied design at the Tokyo University of the Arts, graduating in 1979 before taking up a position in an advertising agency in Tokyo. After five years Nomata left in order to focus on his painting practice, and in 1986 held his debut exhibition ‘STILL – Quiet Garden’ at the Sagacho Exhibit Space, an alternative gallery in Tokyo run by Kazuko Koike. Further solo exhibitions include Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo (1993); Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2004); The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan (2010); Sagacho Archives, Tokyo (2012, 2018), De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea (2022) and most recently at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2023). Until recently, Nomata was a Professor at the Joshibi University of Art and Design in Tokyo.

About Yang Yongliang

Yang Yongliang (b. 1980, Shanghai) is a New York–based artist. Trained in classical Chinese painting, Yang reconfigures shanshui traditions through dense digital montage. His panoramic compositions initially resemble ink landscapes, yet dissolve on close viewing into skyscrapers, circuitry, construction grids and urban sprawl. This tension between beauty and disquiet articulates the contradictions of hypermodernity: its acceleration, artificiality and uneasy continuities with the past. Working across photography, moving image and installation, Yang builds atmospheres that question how contemporary civilisation reshapes cultural and ecological terrain. His work is held in major public collections worldwide.

About Yin Aiwen

Yin Aiwen (b. Zhanjiang) is a Rotterdam-based designer, artist, researcher and strategist. Yin is an artist, designer, researcher, and occasional institutional strategist. Departing from the idea that 'the technological is institutional, the institutional is technological', Yin reconsiders and reimagines socio-economic, cultural, emotional, and bodily conditions by designing new techno-institutional frameworks grounded in care ethics. Her work often begins with ambitious speculative questions and uses critical theory as a design brief to create new systems of value through various forms of demonstration, such as performances, games, digital platforms, or exhibitions. Yin teaches at Design Academy Eindhoven and the Master Institute of Visual Cultures in the Netherlands. She received an Asymmetry Scholarship to pursue a PhD in Advanced Practices at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2024. Previously, she held research fellowships at Framer Framed (2024), the Creative Impact Research Centre Europe (2024 & 2023), ZK/U Berlin (2019), and Art Center South Florida (US, 2017). In 2019, Yin received the INFORM Prize for Conceptual Design for her work.

Image credits:

1,2 and 8. Charmaine Poh, The Moon Is Wet (2025), 24:30, 3-channel video installation. Commissioned by PalaisPopulaire. Film still courtesy of the artist

3. Xin Liu, Insomnia (2025). Aluminum, stainless steel, resin, fibreglass, acrylic, led lights, silicone oil, water, duckweed. Tank: 1260 x 1780 x 350mm. Kinetic systems (each): 150 x 1780 x 1200mm. Courtesy of the artist, Makeroom LA, Public Gallery, London

4. Minoru Nomata, Resonance-1 (2025). Acrylic on canvas, 162.4 x 65.2 cm. © Minoru Nomata. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)

5. Minoru Nomata, Resonance-2 (2025). Acrylic on canvas, 162.4 x 65.2 cm. © Minoru Nomata. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)

6. Nicole Coson, Some place, within here (2024). Aluminum cast oyster, shells and chains. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries.

7. Yin Aiwen, Liquid Dependencies: what does a decentralised caring society look like? (2021–ongoing, developed with Zoe Zhao and Yiren Zhao, UK iteration assisted by Lauren Rees and Yee Ting Lau)

About esea contemporary

esea contemporary is the UK’s only non-profit art centre specialising in presenting and platforming artists and art practices that identify with and are informed by East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) cultural backgrounds.

esea contemporary is situated in an award-winning building in the heart of Manchester, home to one of the largest East Asian populations in the UK. Since its inauguration as a community-oriented visual arts festival in 1986, esea contemporary has continuously evolved to establish itself as a dynamic and engaging space for cross-cultural exchanges in the British art scene, as well as in a global context.

esea contemporary aims to increase the visibility of contemporary art practices from the East and Southeast Asian communities and their diasporas. It is a site for forward-thinking art programmes that beyond exhibitions also include commissions, research, residencies, publishing, and a wide range of vibrant public events. esea contemporary values creativity, compassion, interconnectedness, and collectivity in implementing its mission.

Learn more at: www.eseacontemporary.org

Photo by Joe Smith.