esea contemporary marks its 40th anniversary in 2026 with Thresholds of Becoming, a new group exhibition bringing 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.
Drawing on Vietnamese theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha’s writing on passage and in-betweenness – that to move across is also to move within – the exhibition dwells in these thresholds – tidal, digital, speculative, terrestrial – tracing the fragile grounds on which we live. Here, transition becomes a lived condition: a turbulence in which forms reorganise, histories unsettle, and futures flicker into view.
Thresholds of Becoming
Feb 21 – May 17, 2026
esea contemporary
Manchester, UK
