Chenyi Liu

The traditional Chinese character, "Fu", meaning "good fortune", has been a core symbol in Chinese culture for centuries. In honour of 2025, the Year of the Snake, Chenyi reimagined the character by infusing it with animality and motion, transforming its strokes into the form of a coiling snake. This draws on a long-standing artistic tradition in both China and beyond: animals have often been blended with functional objects, tools, and characters in decorative arts.

Chenyi reinterprets the concept of "Fu" for a contemporary audience through the medium of Goldwork embroidery. Inspired by a recent calligraphy work, she aims to raise questions about how traditional motifs can evolve while retaining their cultural meaning, with a symbolic, shape-shifting design that balances classical beauty with a modern visual language, embodying both reverence and renewal.

This piece echoes the Prize's theme by reflecting on what we choose to preserve and display. Drawing on both museum-held artefacts and vernacular traditions, it blends Chinese and Western embroidery practices to challenge the boundary between craft and art. It is at once a homage to heritage and an assertion of contemporary authorship—an embroidery that carries both memory and imagination into the future.

Materials: Hand-stitched gold and silver thread, DMC and white beads on deep purple velvet.