Omid Asadi
Contrast and contradiction are central to my practice. I am interested in what happens when opposing materials, ideas, histories and experiences are brought together and allowed to coexist without being resolved. Through these tensions, I explore memory, displacement, loss, belonging and our relationship with places that change, disappear or continue to exist through memory.
I work across installation, sculpture, performance and other media, choosing materials and methods according to what each work demands rather than following a fixed visual language. My process is led by the relationship between idea and material, allowing work to develop through experimentation, testing and response.
Materials are important not only for their physical qualities but for the histories, associations and memories they carry. I often bring together elements that appear incompatible: fragile and solid, familiar and unfamiliar, permanent and temporary, attraction and discomfort, presence and absence. These contrasts create conditions of tension and instability through which different meanings can emerge.
Space and the viewer’s physical experience are equally important. Rather than directly representing memory or displacement, I am interested in creating environments where these ideas can be encountered through movement, proximity, material and sensory experience. Increasingly, I am exploring how elements beyond the visual, including sound and scent, can extend these experiences.
I see contradiction not as something that needs to be resolved, but as a productive space where multiple realities can exist simultaneously. This allows my work to hold complexity and uncertainty while remaining open to different experiences and interpretations.
Lived Experience
My practice is shaped by moving through distinct and often conflicting systems. I grew up in post-revolution Iran during the Iran–Iraq War, later studied fluid mechanics and worked in the oil industry before migrating to the UK and eventually becoming an artist.
Growing up in a place affected by war gave me an early experience of how environments that appear permanent can suddenly become unstable, damaged or disappear. Migration later changed my relationship with home, belonging and memory again, creating a distance between places as they are remembered and how they continue to exist, change or disappear without us.
My background in fluid mechanics and the oil industry has also influenced how I understand materials and physical relationships. Ideas of force, pressure, resistance and structural behaviour have become part of how I think through making, not simply as metaphors but as ways of organising materials and space.
These different experiences come together in my work without being directly illustrated. Personal and political histories are embedded within material choices, spatial relationships and the tensions between elements. They have shaped my interest in displacement, instability and the disappearance of lived spaces, but also my tendency to hold contradictory experiences together rather than resolve them into a single narrative or identity.
Omid Asadi – CV
Education
2017–2018 | MA Fine Art, Manchester Metropolitan University
2014–2017 | BA (Hons) Fine Art, Manchester Metropolitan University
2013–2014 | Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, Trafford College
Awards & Residencies
2026 | Commissioned residency, University of Salford art Collection and Energy
House 2.0, Salford
2025-2026 | Awarded Residency, Cove Park, Scotland
2025-26 | Awarded residency, Instituto Sacatar/ Factory international, Brazil
2024 | Awarded, Independent Creative of the Year, Manchester Culture Awards
2024 | Nominated, Best Exhibition of the Year, Manchester Culture Awards
2024–2025 | Awarded, At Home with Jerwood Residency, HOME Jerwood / London
2024–2025 | Awarded, Syllabus VII, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge
2022 | Awarded Residency, Kulturföreningen SVENSHÖGEN STATION, Sweden
2022 | Residency Exchange, SODAS 2123, Vilnius, Lithuania
2022 | Awarded Venture Arts Residency, Conversations Series III
2021 | Longlisted, UK New Artist of the Year
2021 | Cultural Fund for Freelancers, Grant Award
2020 | Arts Council England, Emergency Response Fund
2019 | PROFORMA Pavilion, Corte Supernova, Venice
2019 | Shortlisted, John Ruskin Prize
2018 | Runner-up, Greater Manchester Art Prize
2017 | Leonard Little Prize
2017 | Castlefield Gallery Mentorship Award
2017 | The AIR Open Award
Selected Commissions
2025 | HOME Arches Commission, Push Festival, Manchester
2022 | APP Commission, Leeds University
2021 | Performance Commission, PROFORMA, Loiter Programme, Manchester
Solo Exhibitions
upcoming solo show,
14/01/2027-05/04/2027 Omid Asadi, Whitaker Museum & Gallery, Rossendale
2023–2024 | Omid Asadi, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
2022 | Last Drop of Oil, SVENSHÖGEN STATION, Sweden
2020–2021 | Autopsy of a Home, CFCCA, Manchester
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 | NARRATIVE, The Lowry, Salford
2022 | Manchester Contemporary, Venture Arts, Manchester Central
2022 | Intersections, Paradise Works, Manchester
2022 | Proforma Pavilion, PASE Platform, Venice Biennale, Italy
2019 | Agent of Change, John Ruskin Prize, Holden Gallery, Manchester
2019 | Proforma Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Italy
2019 | Sources, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
2019 | State of the Arts, Selfridges, Manchester Exchange Square
2018 | The Ground Beneath Your Feet, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
2018 | Winter Collection, Saul Hay Gallery, Manchester
2018 | Manchester Contemporary Art Fair, Asia Triennial, Manchester
2018 | Warrington Contemporary Art Festival, Warrington Museum & Art Gallery
2018 | Proforma Contemporary Art Festival, The Dancehouse Theatre, Manchester
2018 | Emergence, AIR Gallery, Altrincham
2018 | Greater Manchester Art Prize, Stockport Art Gallery
2018 | Contested Territories / Altered States, Plant NOMA, Manchester
2017 | The Manchester Contemporary, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
2017 | Manchester Art Fair, Abode Gallery, Manchester
2017 | In Visible Lines, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester
2017 | AIR Open, AIR Gallery, Altrincham
Selected Bibliography & publications
- 2026 Oarham Ghalamdar, Saffron, Silence, and the Coming Ruin: A Review of Omid Asadi’s Unfinished Sentences, Becoming Press
- 2024 | Open Table No.3: Katy Shahandeh & Omid Asadi, Corridor 8
- 2024 | Dandelion Seeds and Broken Walls: Artist Omid Asadi on His Solo Exhibition, Northern Soul
- 2023 | Vanessa Peterson, Dispatch from Manchester, Frieze
- 2022 | Harpreet Kaur, A Modest Show: ‘Intersections’ / Triple Decker at Paradise Works, The Fourdrinier
- 2021 | Natalie Bradbury, Loiter, Art Monthly
- 2021 | Natalie Bradbury, Loiter, Corridor 8
- 2019 | Bob Dickinson, The Ground Beneath Your Feet, Art Monthly
- 2018 | Holly Pollard, Art Preview, Now Then Magazine
Programmes / Collaborative Projects
2022 (May–Sep) | Creative Lives, University of Sheffield
2021–2022 (Oct–Mar) | SUSTAIN: Artist Digital Exchange, Castlefield Gallery (Manchester) & Aarhus Billedkunstcenter (Denmark)
Public Collections
- Leeds Arts University
- Siam Discovery Shopping Mall, Bangkok, Thailand
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