The Manifold of Memory: Detail Within Detail, Bagri Commission

This autumn, step into a new immersive installation by artist Gulnur Mukazhanova - her first UK museum exhibition. 

Beginning with one small textile fragment from the Whitworth’s collection as inspiration, Mukazhanova expands it into a giant felt environment inspired by the nomadic cultures of the Central Asian steppe.  

Felt is more than a material: it carries memory and symbolises home, nature and cosmology. For centuries, it’s sheltered families, wrapped belongings, travelled across landscapes and held cultural knowledge.  

In The Manifold of Memory: Detail Within Detail it becomes something alive again — soft, sculptural and shifting as you move through it.  

Inside the installation, textures ripple, colours shift and forms seem to grow from the past into the future. Explore slowly, notice details, follow patterns and experience how art can speak through touch as much as sight.  

This is the first Bagri Commission at the Whitworth, a major new collaboration that brings bold international voices to Manchester. The exhibition offers something you won’t have seen before: a unique encounter with an artist reshaping what textile, memory and contemporary sculpture can be.  

20 November 2026  - May 2027

Image credit: Gulnur Mukazhanova, The Shadows of Hope, 2024. Courtesy of Aspan Gallery, Photo by Anvar Rakishev.