Artistic collaboration Maison Margiela × Birdhead
Chinese New Year Limited Edition
About the Collaboration
Maison Margiela CNY Collaboration
Maison Margiela collaborated with Shanghai-based photographic collective Birdhead for their 2023 Chinese New Year edition. Using CNY photographs, Birdhead layered time and memory under red light to create a festive visual tension.
Through photo collage, the collective reinterpreted New Year traditions by blending analog imagery with symbolic signs. Under the title “Under The Red Light”, the artwork pays tribute to analog photography and to those who preserve memories.
Darkroom-developed holiday prints were cut, recomposed, and finished with the character “Fu” (good fortune) painted on top. The artwork deconstructs festive memories and rebuilds them into a new visual universe.
Campaign Activation
Artistic collaboration featuring limited-edition packaging alongside a hero movie, digital content, and retail activations, the project brought photographers duo Birdhead’s vision to life while reinforcing Maison Margiela’s avant-garde and conceptual identity.
Visual Codes
Campaign Assets
- Design
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Birdhead
Birdhead -Shanghai contemporary photography
BIRDHEAD 鸟头 is a Shanghai-based contemporary artists duo, founded in 2004 consisting of Song Tao and Ji Weiyu. Blending photography and urban culture, their works, Based on the aesthetic of the snapshot, have earned them worldwide recognition. Analog photography is in the DNA of their work. BIRDHEAD captures fleeting moments of everyday life to offer a version of urban reality – idle youth, crumbling buildings, faded advertisements and other street scenes – that offers a striking contrast to the opulence of the Chinese megalopolis.
The palpable tension in their work contrasts underlying reality with the kaleidoscopic diversity of life, while offering a profound reflection on the relationship between the material and the spiritual. Through their subjective representation, we witness live the changes of the city and its rapid development.
By combining the photographic matrix, collage, a particular editing technique, etc., Birdhead creates a “Birdhead world” in various international exhibition spaces and a humanistic environment. The immersive universe of these Shanghai photographers creates cool and meaningful opportunities for creative brand collaborations.
They collaborate with Birdhead: YSL, Maison Margiela
OTHER WORKS
Luxury cognac limited edition for the Year of the Horse with a Chinese contemporary artist.
Maison Margiela collaboration with young textile artist: New Year, New Fragrance.
A collector’s Zodiac limited edition where the Horse embodies the passage of time.
