After shifting from music to visual art more than a decade ago, Ai Jing achieves both recognition and satisfaction on two sides of the globe.

Visual art has become Chinese singer-songwriter Ai Jing's passion over the past decade.

In November, she will stage her solo exhibition, Ai Jing Back to New York, at the Marlborough Gallery in New York City, with nearly 30 artworks created over the past decade, including sculptures, oil paintings and installations.

The works on display include My Mom and My Hometown, a tapestry of wool patches knitted by Ai's mother and bedecked with the English word "Love"; The Tree of Life, an installation work showing a lonely raven perched on a leafless oak tree made of tens of thousands of disposable chopsticks; and oil paintings under the group name I Love Color.

"New York is an important city for my transition from a musician to an artist. I always want to revisit the origin of my passion for visual art with my own works," says the 46-year-old artist, who announced the exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing on Tuesday.

In 1999, she started learning painting with renowned Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Xiaogang. Years later, Ai had reached a level high enough to hold a solo exhibition, I Love Ai Jing, at the National Museum of China in Beijing in 2012 and again at the China Art Museum of Shanghai in 2014.

In 2008, Ai left New York and established a studio in Beijing, devoting herself to working as a professional artist.

Looking back on her journey as an artist, Ai says that she often asks herself two questions: What is art? Why I am making art?

"My art-making is about repeated experimentation and failure. Usually, I go through starvation, sleepless nights and anxiety to finish one piece. But I enjoy the process of making the imagined real with my hands," she says.

Source: chinadaily.com.cn