From songs to canvas

A trip to New York pointed a Chinese singer-songwriter in a new direction - and it's all about love

In 1997, Ai Jing visited New York for the first time, when she performed at the CMJ Music Festival in the Lincoln Center, an important showcase for new bands and musicians from around the world.

Then in her early 20s, singer-songwriter Ai had risen to fame in China in 1995 with her song My 1997, a semi-autobiographical ballad about her love for a man in Hong Kong. She looks forward to Britain's 1997 handover of the island to China so she can visit him.

It not only won a large fan base for her on the Chinese mainland but also in Japan. Signed to Sony Music Entertainment of Japan at the time, Ai performed seven of her songs at the New York festival, eager to promote Chinese pop music to the global market.

Unexpectedly, that trip would ignite a new passion: contemporary art.

After her performance, Ai walked around in New York and came across a small catalog, titled Love, on display in a bookstore window. Inside, she learned about the artist Keith Haring, whose visual language seems simple but is powerful and direct.

"I was impressed by his expressions about love. That was the first time I sensed a connection between popular music and visual art," Ai recalls. "It seemed as if I had begun to understand contemporary art and discovered the similarities between the two creative processes."

Now, two decades later, the 48-year-old Ai has transformed herself into a contemporary artist. The word "love" has become the main theme of her work.

Ai recently released an English-language book in Beijing. Featuring photos of her artworks, her images and her diary-like articles, the book, titled Ai Jing Love Art 2007-2017, is "a summary and reflection of my 10 years as a professional artist", she says.

In the book, she writes about the important events in her art career, such as her solo exhibition, I Love Ai Jing, in 2012 at the National Museum of China in Beijing. Ai was the first contemporary Chinese artist to have such a show there, and her "Love" series later traveled to the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan in 2015 and the Marlborough Gallery in New York in 2016.

A turning point in Ai's music career had come in 1999, when her fourth album, Made in China, was recorded in Los Angeles but never released in China.

"It was devastating," says Ai, who was born and raised in Shenyang, Liaoning province, a city of heavy industry in Northeast China. Ai had been interested in music from childhood and received vocal training from the age of 9. Her father was a factory worker and was good at playing several folk instruments. Her mother excelled at singing.

The setback with her 1999 album gave her an opportunity to slow down, reflect about her life and figure out what she really wanted to do.

She took up painting and studied with Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Xiaogang. In 2002, she moved to New York.

Ai's first studio was in Manhattan's Lower East Side, where she began to incorporate the word" love" into her paintings. She was thrilled about having the studio, singing at the top o0f her voice for a while. She nurtured her new ambition every weekend in museums, auction previews, art fairs, and on the street.

With the word "love" as her visual language, she created installations with materials such as disposable chopsticks, vintage doors and newspapers.

"Keith Haring and Robert Indiana are the most well-known artists associated with this word. However, I believed that I would find my own way," says Ai.

Her family and hometown have become her early inspirations.

One of Ai's artworks is an installation, My Mom and My Hometown. Fifty-five people, including her mother, friends and hometown relatives, helped with the piece by knitting yarn from old woollen garments they no longer wear. The resulting tapestry contains more than 2,400 pieces of fabric bearing the word "Love". The installation is 6 meters wide and 16 meters long. A statue of Ai's mother, diligently knitting, has been placed at the end of the work.

Though Ai says that she hopes that people forget about her musical past, her music fans are eager to hear her latest musical effort.

In one of her artworks, Ai combines her musical talent with her current identity as a contemporary artist. Ai's 2-meter-high installation, To da Vinci, was displayed at her solo exhibition, Dialogue, at Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan in 2015, along with nine of her other works, including paintings, sculptures and installations.

To da Vinci was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's oil painting Portrait of a Musician, in which a young musician holds a folded musical score.

"I was not sure if the ambiguity (of the score) was intentional or just a result of time. Da Vinci left us a hint for further investigation," says Ai. "I began to imagine and compose the auditory aspects of the painting. Based on the notes in the portrait, I wrote music and turned it into a turning mechanical wheel."

"Those people, who choose a creative life, are often possessed of an inner strength," writes Benjamin Genocchio, an art critic and director of the Armory Show, a New York-based art fair where Ai exhibited in 2016, in Ai's new book.

"I saw that strength at Ai Jing's studio in Beijing, where I spent time observing her work. I was really observing her, looking for signs of passion and commitment to art. What I discovered was an artist, who approaches making art on a daily basis as a gift to be shared with others, the gift of joy, of hope, and of beauty."

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 05/19/2017 page24)