Hyundai Translocal Series: Entangled and Woven

Textiles are part of everyday life. We wear them, they stretch, fade, tear and get repaired. Along the way, they soak up time, touch and memory — often without us noticing.

 Hyundai Translocal Series: Entangled and Woven  starts from that simple idea. Bringing together new work by eight contemporary artists and collectives from Korea and India with historic textiles from the Whitworth’s collection, the exhibition traces surprising connections between Manchester’s industrial past and living craft traditions shaped by culture, migration, labour and care.  

Co-organised with the Cheongju Craft Biennale 2025, in collaboration with the National Crafts Museum & Hastkala Academy, and presented in partnership with Hyundai Motor Company, the exhibition treats textiles as active, changing materials rather than objects from the past. Through weaving, dyeing, embroidery and hand-spun fibre, it shows how skills are passed on, adapted and shared — from hand-to-hand, generation-to-generation.  

Across the galleries, newly commissioned installations by eight artists and collectives sit alongside Indian and Korean textiles dating back more than 400 years. Historic pieces are not tucked away as relics, but brought into conversation with contemporary work, opening up stories of ingenuity and industry, intimacy and extraction.  

Many of the new works were made through close collaboration with artisan communities across Korea and India. These projects value time, shared knowledge and slow making, offering a refreshing take on fast fashion and mass production.  

Hyundai Translocal Series: Entangled and Woven  invites you to slow down, look closely, and notice the human stories woven into the fabrics around us every day.  

In partnership with Hyundai Motor Company