11 years ago, artist Jin Le went back to his hometown - Shijiezi village, on the Huangtu Plateau in Gansu province. He set out an Art Practice Project, trying to turn this infertile northwestern village into an art gallery. The project has exposed ordinary villagers to contemporary art and helped them become artists of their own. Check it out.

JIN LE, FOUNDER SHIJIEZI ART GALLERY "Back in the 1980s, I was the first university student in our village. I was lucky to be admitted to Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts. In 1998, I went to the Central Academy of Fine Arts to continue my studies. I went to Lanzhou two years later and then back to Shijiezi. I was thinking of bringing art to this village. The village art gallery was not established until 2008. The 13 family homes in the village were turned into 13 small galleries. And every year we would organize some artistic events."

JIN LE, FOUNDER SHIJIEZI ART GALLERY "This horse was carved based on a painted version created by a villager. It is a joint creation of artist Qin Ga and villager Li Baoyuan. And these are pepper trees that many people find interesting because of their shape. The works have been displayed at the Shanghai Min Gallery for two months and then moved back here."

JIN LE, FOUNDER SHIJIEZI ART GALLERY "In 2007 I took four of the villagers to Germany to participate in an art exhibition there. One day it rained heavily outside, the villagers stared at the rain instead of viewing the exhibits. A local reporter asked them why they kept watching the rain. They said that they were from a very dry village and rarely saw real rain. Then the reporter asked them, 'Which one is more important, art or rain?' The villagers answered, 'Without art, it's impossible for us to come to Germany, but without rain, the crops cannot survive. So art is important, but rain is more necessary."

JIN LE, FOUNDER SHIJIEZI ART GALLERY "Our education defines art as a specific subject. I think, however, good art is intertwined with life. The village itself is set in artistic surroundings that accentuate the relationship between man and nature. From the very beginning, we considered this relationship as a work of art. And the villagers' daily life is part of it."

JIN LE, FOUNDER SHIJIEZI ART GALLERY "I told villagers that all the things related to your life, including the tools and other items used in everyday life, can be made into a work of art. That is, I asked them to look at them from a fresh angle and encouraged them to discover interesting things in their life and turn them into art."

LI BAOYUAN VILLAGER "I used to know nothing about art. Following the establishment of the art gallery, more and more people started to visit our village. I've been to Beijing and Shanghai to take part in exhibitions. Those experiences made me fond of art, falling in love with it slowly."

JIN LE, FOUNDER SHIJIEZI ART GALLERY "I hope that through art, our villagers would come to realize that we have the capabilities to turn our home and our land into a nicer place. We should believe in art and its strength. The soil, the trees and the buildings are all works of art. Our life itself is art."