Chinese New Year 2026: Creativity as Legacy, Fortune as Motion
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February 13, 2026
Chinese New Year 2026: Creativity as Legacy, Fortune as Motion
Over the past seven years, Kering has marked Chinese New Year through collaborations with contemporary Chinese artists. More than seasonal greetings, these annual invitations have become a platform for creative dialogue – celebrating heritage while amplifying voices shaping the future of art.
This year, the Kering Chinese New Year art collaboration invites audiences into the world of Wen Na, a Beijing-born artist and graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University. This commission is the latest chapter in a long-standing initiative celebrating the richness of Chinese culture through contemporary creation.
The initiative is also rooted in empowering women: since 2019, nearly every collaboration has spotlighted a female artist, aligning with the Kering Women In Motion program, which champions women’s contributions across arts and culture.
Wen Na is among them. Known for her large-scale murals, sculptures, and installations, her work fuses modern imagery with traditional cultural references in a vibrant, immersive visual language. For this 2026 commission marking the Year of the Horse, she brings the Group's signature, Creativity is our Legacy, to life – in her own, distinctive style.
“At Kering, we believe in creativity's power to foster cultural dialogue. Our Chinese New Year artist initiative celebrates Chinese artistic heritage while serving as a bridge for creative exchange.”
A vision of energy and renewal
In Clouds Burst Apart, Fortune Gallops In, Wen Na composes a scene animated by movement and light. Rendered in airy, expressive brushstrokes and radiant colors, the piece seems to pulse with life: clouds part to reveal the sun as a noble steed charges forward at full speed, swallows cut across the sky, and zouma lanterns punctuate the horizon. Auspicious motifs—gold ingots, peach blossoms, gourds, and feather fans—are woven throughout, conveying wishes of prosperity, vitality, and good fortune.
While deeply anchored in Chinese symbolism, the piece resists a simple reprise of conventional New Year imagery. Because, for Wen Na, Spring Festival is as much a moment to look inward, to reawaken inner energy.
Her philosophy captures what the initiative has championed since its beginning: connecting what is familiar with what is new. Her project joins a series of collaborations that do just that, offering fresh interpretations of the zodiac while drawing on time-honored artistic techniques.
A growing constellation of artists
Kering partnership with Chinese artists began in 2019 with Xu Bing, whose English square character calligraphy bridged Chinese and Latin scripts and set the tone for a program rooted in cultural dialogue and experimentation – one that has since grown in scope and ambition.
In the years that followed, Kering turned to artists infusing classical forms with playful, contemporary energy. Papercut artist Wen Qiwen created Gazing at the Sky beyond the Clouds for the Year of the Rat (2020), offering an optimistic wish, while contemporary calligrapher Xu Jing marked the Year of the Tiger (2022) with an auspicious brushstroke.
As the initiative matured, the collaborations began to link New Year symbolism with wider reflections on nature, imagination, and inner life. Ink wash artist Peng Wei’s interactive work That Year, created for the Year of the Rabbit (2023), blended landscape imagery and animation to connect New Year blessings with biodiversity, harmony between humans and nature, and an ecological vision of the future. In 2024, Chen Ke’s oil painting Dragon Boat intentionally departed from conventional dragon iconography, portraying a whimsical encounter between a child and a nontraditional dragonshaped vessel – an ode to hope, and the power of imagination.
Most recently, in 2025, the Year of the Wood Snake, Jiang Miao—who trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts— developed a work rooted in her series Taoist Trinity and the Self. Her swirling purple compositions, carved from more than twenty layers of acrylic color, evoke cycles of life, renewal, and energy, mirroring the symbolic reset of the New Year and deepening the program’s exploration of how New Year renewal resonates with both personal and cosmic rhythms.
Beyond the canvas
Across these editions, each collaboration has found new life well beyond the original artwork. This year is no exception: Clouds Burst Apart, Fortune Gallops In anchors a digital campaign that invites audiences to take part through an interactive WeChat mini-program, where users can create smartphone wallpapers, red packet covers, and customized digital greeting cards.
The initiative's reach extends further through the Kering Women In Motion official WeChat account, which has become a dedicated community for female artists and creatives in China. To date, it has featured more than 100 interviews—including with Wen Na, Jiang Miao, Chen Ke, and Peng Wei—sharing their stories, creative journeys, and artistic reflections, and amplifying the voices behind each year's commission.
Strengthening ties with Chinese audiences
Over the past seven consecutive years, these Chinese New Year campaigns have become one of the Group’s key cultural exchange initiatives, honoring tradition while opening space for new stories and perspectives.
This balance between tradition and reinvention reflects the Kering spirit: rooted in heritage yet distinctly forward-looking. Because, in Wen Na’s words, creativity is a force; one that is carried forward from one generation to the next.
