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Ai Weiwei Quotes
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Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. His father's original surname was written Jiang . Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. As a political activist, he has been highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He has investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of so-called "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, following his arrest at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, he was held for 81 days without any official charges being filed; officials alluded to their allegations of "economic crimes".

✵ 28. August 1957
Ai Weiwei photo
Ai Weiwei: 218 quotes39 likes

Ai Weiwei Quotes

“We see plenty of artistic work that reflects superficial social conditions, but very little work that questions fundamental values.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

“Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again....”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: 'Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again...', 2011

“Why are you so concerned about society?' That is always the question. And my answer is simple: 'Because you are an artist, you have to associate yourself with freedom of expression.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

“My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.”

Ai Weiwei

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

“As an artist, I am very familiar with how to show the details, how to transform them into a language people can understand. They [the government] know that the Internet is a strong force, unbearable for them.”

Ai Weiwei

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

“It doesn’t matter where I am—China will stay in me. I don’t know how far I can still walk on this road and what is the limit.”

Ai Weiwei

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

“There is no revolution like the Communist revolution. You simply burn all the books, kill all of the thinking people and use the poor proletariat to create a very simple benchmark to gauge social change.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

“The Sichuan disaster is not the first nor the most wrongful. But all the details of this tragedy will be forgotten, and once again it will be like nothing ever happened. Eventually all these disasters will together create a bizarre miracle called civilization and evolution.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Our Duty Is to Remember Sichuan, 2009

“I spend very little time just doing '“art as art.'”

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

“At midnight they can come into your room and take you away. They can put a black hood on you, take you to a secret place and interrogate you, trying to stop what you’re doing. They threaten people, your family, saying: 'Your children won’t find jobs.”

Ai Weiwei

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

“In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed. Just take the example from yesterday: I had given a telephone interview to CNN. Then, suddenly, CNN was shut down for a couple of minutes. It was the first time I experienced that my television went totally dead. I realized: Oh my God, it’s because of me. This is crazy! Which nation would do that? Maybe Cuba, North Korea, China. But what do they want, what are they so afraid of?”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei Does Not Feel Powerful, 2011

“The biggest crime of a dictatorship is to eradicate human feelings from people.”

Ai Weiwei

“ China Artist Ai Weiwei Says He Regrets Designing Beijing Olympics Bird’s Nest http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2012/apr/16/china-censorship-internet-freedom.” Telegraph, March 5, 2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9123705/China-artist-Ai-Weiwei-says-he-regrets-designing-Beijing-Olympics-Birds-Nest.html <br class="br">2010-, 2012

“The Olympics are an opportunity to redefine the country, but the message is always wrong.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Happiness Can’t Be Faked, 2008

“This is a decadent era. Its main characteristic is that it’s dependent on lies and cheating. Once it loses this characteristic, it can’t survive for even a day.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei on Twitter in English (beta). (February 22, 2011) http://aiwwenglish.tumblr.com/
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

“People often say I started to become too outspoken after a certain period. It’s all because of the Internet. If we didn’t have this technology I would be same as everybody else. I couldn’t really amplify my voice.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, I have to speak for people who are afraid, 2010

“The frustration mainly comes from trying to understand what they really want. Also, you cannot understand how can such a large nation maintain its so-called stability by doing something very unlawful. I mean, how can they possibly manage to stabilize the whole social condition by not [acting with] justice and fairness.”

Ai Weiwei

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

“When the mayor of Nagoya denies the Nanjing Massacre, he gets blacklisted by the city of Nanjing. When the government of Sichuan denies “tofu dregs” construction [which caused the collapse of several schools], they get blacklisted by me.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei on Twitter in English (beta). (February 26, 2012) http://aiwwenglish.tumblr.com/
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

“In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want—not only you, your whole family and all people like you.”

Ai Weiwei

“ At home: Ai Weiwei http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/6fdcaae6-5959-11e1-abf1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1nQPAYr26..” Financial Times, February 24, 2012. <br class="br">2010-, 2012

“Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.”

Ai Weiwei

&quot; Artist Ai Weiwei: China Crushes Dissenting Voices http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/06/11/artist-ai-weiwei-china-crushes-dissenting-voices/.,&quot; in: Fox News, June 11, 2012. <br class="br">2010-, 2012

“I call on people to be “obsessed citizens,” forever questioning and asking for accountability. That’s the only chance we have today of a healthy and happy life.”

Ai Weiwei

&quot; Our Duty Is to Remember Sichuan http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/25/china-earthquake-cover-up/print.&quot; Guardian.co.uk., May 25, 2009. <br class="br">2000-09, 2009

“If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.”

Ai Weiwei

Osnos, Evan. “ It’s Not Beautiful: An Artist Takes On the System http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/24/100524fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all.” New Yorker, May 24, 2010, 54–63. <br class="br">2010-, 2010

“No outdoor sports can be more elegant than throwing stones at autocracy; no melees can be more exciting than those in cyberspace.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (8:03 a.m. March 10, 2010)
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

“I think right now is the moment. This is the beginning. We don’t know what is it the moment of, and maybe something much crazier will happen. But really, we see the sunshine coming in. It was clouded for maybe a hundred years. Our whole condition was very sad, but we still feel warmth, and the life in our bodies can still tell that there is excitement in there, even though death is waiting. We had better not enjoy the moment, but create the moment.”

Ai Weiwei

Tinari, Philip, and Angie Baecker, eds. Hans Ulrich Obrist: The China Interviews. Beijing: Office for Discourse Engineering, 2009.
2000-09, 2009

“This does not mean a meteor has fallen. This is the discovery of a star.”

Ai Weiwei

Watts, Jonathan. “ Chinese Human Rights Activist Liu Xiaobo Sentenced to 11 Years in Jail http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/25/china-jails-liu-xiaobo.” Guardian, December 25, 2009. <br class="br">2000-09, 2009

“Before blogging, I was living in the Middle Ages. Now my feelings for time and space are entirely different.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, The Bold and the Beautiful, 2009

“I often think what I’m saying is for the people who never had a chance to be heard.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

“I think I have this responsibility to my father’s generation, and especially future generations.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: 'Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again...', 2011

“I don’t really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What’s life if you don’t have conversation and joy and anger?”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: 'Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again...', 2011

“The population is in a constant state of enforced dislocation. So let us hope that a totally new culture will come out of this.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

“Modernism represents a true kind of living. Modernism is not about form or method or the works of a few artists, but rather about a necessary way of living. And only this kind of lifestyle can save China, because if we don’t have modernism, then we will die under the grasp of one or another ideology. Modernism at least says that every person is free and needs to honestly encounter his own life.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, A Kind of True Living, 2007

“The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.”

Ai Weiwei

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

“If there is no freedom of expression, then the beauty of life is lost. Participation in a society is not an artistic choice, it’s a human need.”

Ai Weiwei

Solway, Diane. “Enforced Disappearance.” W Magazine, November 2011.
2010-, 2011

“Block [my blog] if you want, but I cannot self-censor, because that is the only reason I have the blog. We both know this is a game. You have to play your part, and I have to play mine.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, A Kind of True Living, 2007

“I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: The Dissident, 2011

“You know, if they can do this to me they can do this to anybody, and they have been doing this for over sixty years.... it’s a very strange world.”

Ai Weiwei

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

“The 2008 Olympics has created an illusion of China to the public and to the outside world. It is so fantastic, so unreal, that the entire meaning of the games is being distorted.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Happiness Can’t Be Faked, 2008

“I try to encourage people to look at our past in a critical way because as our education, we have a great, great history. But in reality we are poorest in ethics and philosophy, so I try to raise people’s consciousness on how we deal with our past.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei, interview by Christiane Amanpour, 2010

“In talking about memory and our history, I think our humanity, especially in China, is cut. Cut, broken, separated. If we have a character from our history and memory, the character is broken, it’s shattered.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Escape from Propaganda, 2009

“The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei. “ The Olympics Are a Propaganda Show http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,531883,00.html.” Spiegel, January 29, 2008. <br class="br">2000-09, 2008

“Nothing can silence me as long as I am alive. I don’t give any kind of excuse. If I cannot come out [of China] or I cannot go in [to China] this is not going to change my belief. But when I am there, I am in this condition: I see it, I see people who need help. Then you know, I just want to offer my possibility to help them.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Digital Activism in China, 2010

“Once you’ve tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Never Sorry, 2012

“We need to get out of the old language.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

“If there is one who’s not free, then I am not free. If there is one who suffers, then I suffer.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (6:38 p.m. August 23, 2009)
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009

“Anyone fighting for freedom does not want to totally lose their freedom.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Who Is Ai Weiwei?, 2009

“Citizens should bear the responsibility to act.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: The Dissident, 2011

“[The Olympics are] an event manipulated into misleading people into believing that we have entered a new, successful and harmonious period in our history. This is not true.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

“I definitely know people who are shameless enough to give up basic values. I see this kind of art, and when I see it I feel ashamed. In China they treat art as some form of decoration, a self-indulgence. It is pretending to be art. It looks like art. It sells like art. But it is really a piece of shit.”

Ai Weiwei

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