THEMATIC CALL
#Stories of Chinese Lunar New Year
DEADLINE
March 3, 2026
#Stories of Chinese Lunar New Year
THEMATIC CALL
Chinese New Year is not just a holiday. It is texture, distance, color, sound, and the kind of memory that returns before you do.
Stories of Chinese Lunar New Year, a special edition that gathers works and writing that reimagine the season through objects, places, and feeling.
DEADLINE
March 3, 2026
THE CALL
Chinese New Year is not just a holiday. It is texture, distance, color, sound, and the kind of memory that returns before you do.
ELSEHERE is now accepting submissions for Stories of Chinese Lunar New Year, a special edition that gathers works and writing that reimagine the season through objects, places, and feeling. We are looking for pieces that are intimate, visual, and emotionally precise, as well as works that expand the idea of home, identity, and cultural remembrance across geographies.
Submission Themes
1) Touchable Memories
Start with an object and let it lead you back: fireworks, couplets, New Year prints, dumplings, wrappers, incense, red envelopes, or any everyday detail that carries a whole world inside it.
2) Where the Home Is
“Returning home” is not always possible, and home is not always a birthplace. Home is not always a location, sometimes it is a time, a person, a language, a smell. We welcome works that explore the tension between return and distance, belonging and redefinition, hometown and chosen home.
3) Spectrum of Red
Red is never only one red. We invite works that center red as subject, atmosphere, or structure, exploring its emotional range and cultural resonance.
Special Theme: Thundering Horses, Onrushing Tide
The Year of the Horse returns. We invite bold, playful, or unexpected interpretations that merge the horse motif with New Year elements, building new memories for the season.
Formats Accepted
Multimedia
Photography (up to 5 images)
Static digital works (illustration, poster, etc., up to 5 images)
Video (1–3 min, Chinese + English subtitles required)
Audio (1–3 min)
Each submission must include a description of up to 200 words.
Text
Short poems
Prose
Text submissions: up to 1000 words.
This open call is open worldwide. Individuals or collectives welcome. Emerging and established creators encouraged.
What Selected Artists Receive
Selected works will receive:
Official feature and archival listing on ELSEHERE (a stable link for your portfolio and long-term visibility)
Promotion via ELSEHERE’s official channels, with extended circulation through our international partner network
Curatorial framing and editorial support to strengthen clarity, readability, and cross-cultural accessibility
Invitation to online programs such as artist talks or thematic conversations (subject to schedule)
Priority consideration for future opportunities with ELSEHERE, including upcoming open calls, publishing, and collaborations
Timeline
Open: Sat, Feb 7, 2026
Deadline: Tue, Mar 3, 2026, 23:59
Lantern Festival (15th day of Lunar New Year)
How to submit
Submit via ELSEHERE website application page:
To support platform operations, review, editorial production, and archiving, a submission fee applies: $20
Copyright
Copyright remains with the artist. By submitting, artists grant ELSEHERE the right to use submitted materials for exhibition, publication, promotion, and archiving.
Questions: info@elsehereglobal.com
What We Are Looking For
Clarity of direction
We look for submissions, proposals, and expressions of interest that show a clear sense of purpose, context, and relation to the opportunity.
Rigor and care
We value work that is thoughtfully developed, carefully presented, and attentive to the responsibilities of artistic, scholarly, editorial, or public-facing practice.
Distinct perspective
We are interested in voices, practices, and proposals that bring a specific position, method, language, or field of experience into view.
Openness to complexity
ELSEHERE welcomes work that can hold tension, ambiguity, research, experimentation, and layered meaning without becoming vague or unfocused.
Relevance to context
Each opportunity has its own framework. We encourage applicants and contributors to read the full call carefully and consider how their work, experience, or proposal enters that specific context.
Before You Submit
Please review the full opportunity description before submitting. Each call, program, or expression of interest may have its own eligibility, format, deadline, review process, and required materials.
Depending on the opportunity, you may be asked to provide:
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basic contact and professional information
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a short bio or practice statement
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a project description, proposal, manuscript, work sample, or statement of interest
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links to relevant work, publications, portfolios, websites, or profiles
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technical, spatial, editorial, or contextual information where applicable
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any additional materials requested in the specific call
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Please submit materials that are clear, relevant, and carefully selected. Strong submission materials do not need to be excessive. They should help us understand the work, practice, experience, or proposal on its own terms and in relation to the opportunity.
Incomplete, unclear, or unrelated submissions may be difficult to review.
Review & Consideration
Submissions and expressions of interest are reviewed according to the specific purpose of each opportunity.
Depending on the context, review may consider artistic strength, conceptual clarity, scholarly rigor, editorial fit, feasibility, field expertise, language capacity, professional experience, public relevance, and alignment with ELSEHERE or STRATUM’s current programs and publication priorities.
Selection, invitation, publication, or participation is not guaranteed. Some opportunities may involve further communication, additional materials, interviews, technical review, editorial review, or confirmation before final decisions are made.
ELSEHERE approaches review as a process of attention, not only selection. We are interested in how artistic, scholarly, and cultural practices may enter wider fields of relation, publication, public presentation, and future development.
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