Loss, grief prompts artist's return to hometown values

In October 2015, when Chinese artist Ai Jing's mother died at the age of 65, she returned from Beijing to her hometown of Shenyang, Liaoning province, to take care of her father.

"I was lost and my heart sank when I realized I had lost her forever. I left my hometown at the age of 17 and I didn't spend much time with my mother or my family, which made me feel frustrated," recalls Ai, who found herself visiting a supermarket her mother used to frequent every day and sleeping on her mother's bed in order to get closer to her on her return.

One day, a friend took Ai to visit the Industrial Museum of China in Shenyang's Tiexi district. The smell of engine oil lingering in the air stirred Ai's heart and brought back a flood of childhood memories. Since her family and neighbors all worked in local factories, Ai was transported back to her parents during their youth, her two sisters, and the community's attachment to the factories.

These moments inspired her to spend three years working on an art exhibition, My Mother and My Hometown, which ran from Oct 27, 2018 to Jan 27, 2019 at the museum. The show featured a wide range of mediums, from installations and sculptures to photographs and videos, many of which were created especially for the exhibition.

To complement the exhibition, she published a book of the same name that she discussed at a public event held in Beijing on Dec 21.

The new book features many of the artworks on display at the exhibition, including an aromatic installation entitled Mother's Fragrance. It features a giant ball of yarn, which was placed next to a sculpture of her mother, who sits knitting in a chair, in the exhibition. Under her feet is a tapestry with the word "love" inscribed on it, measuring 6 meters wide by 16 meters long, stretching out over grass.

In September 2015, before her mother's death, Ai traveled with her parents to Europe to see her solo exhibition, Dialogue, at the Ambrosiana Art Gallery at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in the Italian city of Milan. Ai went on to celebrate her 47th birthday in Paris with her parents.

During a quiet afternoon, Ai and her parents visited a hair salon in Paris, and the hair conditioner they used on her mother had an especially fragrant scent that Ai liked－prompting her to buy a few bottles for her mother.

"After my mother died, I was instantly reminded of her every time I opened the bottle of the hair conditioner. I missed her so much that I decided to create an artwork featuring the aroma," Ai says.

Ai included an old photo of her mother in the exhibition, which also appears in the new book. The photo shows her mother with long braids carrying Ai's chubby sister in her arms. Ai is standing next to her mother, laughing. Inspired by the old photo, she created an installation, Girl and Swing, featuring a little girl smiling on a swing. Ai also included pieces of yarn collected by her mother and some of her unfinished knitting works in the exhibition and accompanying book.

In the section dedicated to oil paintings, the artist presents a series of works under the title Time Zone, which described her feelings during Spring Festival in 2016. This was the first Spring Festival that Ai had spent without her mother. Shunning her usual palette of bright colors, Ai applied darker tones to express the depths of her sorrow over losing her mother.

"The exhibition is very special to me because for the first time, it made me think seriously about my hometown, my parents and my childhood life in Shenyang. I used to be ambitious and wanted to explore the outside world, but now I realize that my hometown is my whole world," says Ai.

During her early 20s, Ai rose to fame in China in 1995 with her song, My 1997, a semi-autobiographical ballad about a woman looking forward to joining her lover in Hong Kong after the territory's return to China in 1997. The guitar-driven song not only won her a large fan base on the mainland but also in Japan, prompting her to sign on Sony Music Entertainment Japan at that time. Ai had been interested in music from a young age and received vocal training from the age of 9. Her father plays several folk instruments, including the erhu, and her mother was also an accomplished singer.

After releasing her album, Made in China, in 1999, Ai took up painting and studied with contemporary artist Zhang Xiaogang. In 2002, she moved to New York.

In 2012, she staged her solo exhibition, I Love Ai Jing, at the National Museum of China in Beijing. She also launched solo exhibitions in Milan in 2015 and the Marlborough Gallery in New York in 2016.

Using the word "love" as a visual metaphor, Ai created installations using a variety of media, including disposable chopsticks, vintage doors and newspapers, as well as producing oil paintings and sculptures.

"Her artworks are full of softness and femininity. She also showed her stronger side when she decided to exhibit her artworks at the Industrial Museum of China," says writer Wang Jiaming, who wrote preface for Ai's new book. "The subjects of her expressions are grounded in her personal sensibilities, but the artworks also demonstrate a much broader perspective."