Ai Weiwei: Trending quotes

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Ai Weiwei: 436 quotes39 likes

“We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: The Dissident, 2011

“I think all aesthetic judgments—all the aesthetic choices we are making—are moral choices. They cannot escape the moral dimension in the broader sense. It has to relate to the philosophical understanding of who we are and how so-called “art and culture” functions in today’s world.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Escape from Propaganda, 2009

“Art is not an end but a beginning.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Ai Weiwei: A Rebel of Poet Roots, 2008

“It’s never about me. [My supporters] use me as a mark for themselves to recognize their own form of life: I become their medium. I am always very clear about that.”

Ai Weiwei

Jones, Alice. “ Ten People Who Changed the World: Ai Weiwei, Chinese Artist, Became a Truly Global Force http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/ten-people-who-changed-the-world-ai-weiwei-chinese-artist-became-a-truly-global-force-6282327.html.” Independent, December 31, 2011. <br class="br">2010-, 2011

“It’s really life and death [not art]. When they tell you your mother is 80 years old but you cannot see her again, you can never call it performance art. Or when your son is three, and they tell you that when you are released he will be in his teens and can never recognize you as a father. You feel terrible inside, to lose those chances. Each day, they tell you, 'You will spend your life day after day the same, minute after minute the same. You just have to pay [with] your life for this kind of so-called freedom that you are fighting for.”

Ai Weiwei

There is no sense of justice there. Why do I have to do this with them? Why do I have to argue or play this game?"
2010-, You’re There but You’re Not Existing, 2012

“But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, China’s Censorship Can Never Defeat the Internet, 2012

“House arrest, travel restrictions, surveillance, stopping phone service, cutting the Internet connection. What we can still do is greet the crazy motherland once again.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei on Twitter in English (beta). http://aiwwenglish.tumblr.com/ (December 9, 2010)
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

“I don’t have this concept that separates my art from my daily life. They are one thing to me. They are always one. How do you find the way to express yourself and how to communicate with others?”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei Does Not Feel Powerful, 2011

“Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, " interview for Unilever Series at the Tate Modern http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/ai-weiwei-conversation," at tate.org.uk, October 12, 2010. <br class="br">2010-, 2010

“Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it.”

Ai Weiwei

" Living in Fear Is Worse Than Imprisonment http://mg.co.za/article/2012-06-28-living-in-fear-is-worse-than-imprisonment." Mail and Guardian, June 29, 2012. <br class="br">2010-, 2012

“I’m not sure I’m good at art, but I find an escape in it.”

Ai Weiwei

Barboza, David, and Lynn Zhang. “ The Clown Scholar: Ai Weiwei http://www.artzinechina.com/display.php?a=180..” ArtzineChina, 2008. <br class="br">2000-09, 2008

“The worst thing about Beijing is that you can never trust the judicial system. Without trust, you cannot identify anything; it’s like a sandstorm. You don’t see yourself as part of the city—there are no places that you relate to, that you love to go. You have no memory of any material, texture, shape. Everything is constantly changing, according to somebody else’s will, somebody else’s power.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, The City: Beijing, 2011

“I have the responsibility to let the people know what happened to me, and did I commit the crime or if I didn’t, what is the real accusation? Why am I in this condition today? I think it reflects our human condition in this piece of land, and if I don’t bear some responsibility.... many, many people, their voice can never be heard.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, You’re There but You’re Not Existing, 2012

“"It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product."”

Ai Weiwei

Karen Smith et al. Ai Weiwei (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon), London: Phaidon Press, 2009.
2000-09, 2009

“They detained me for 81 days, but they never killed me. They clearly told me: 'If we were in the Cultural Revolution, you would have been killed 100 times.' They said: 'We have already improved.' I said: 'I thank you very much. Yes, you have improved. Not because you are really willing to improve yourself, but only because improvement is a matter of surviving.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011