“I think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it’s very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.”

The purpose of art is the fight for freedom.

[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I’ve been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.

The project or a few ideas which are not finished or if there are possible directions and what will lead into another game. It’s always like setting up some kind of game you can continuously play.

You have so many museums in the West, and so many shows, you need somebody to show the work, otherwise it’s empty.

Nowadays, China is experiencing the detrimental effects of such decisions. Its citizens have no creativity.

I have to find a place for my own. I have to search for my own happiness.

Today, the general masses in this society are in this political-social condition that really encourages people to become rich and become a star and be unique.

You need a purpose to express yourself, but that expression is its own purpose.

I came back [to Beijing ] because that’s the only time I had an excuse to come back, or otherwise I would never have a reason to come back.

That’s why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.

But personally, I don’t think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it’s beyond my own consciousness.

I don’t belong to a working system. They only select people if you belong to one so you can be controlled.

There are many cases and layers of racist behavior in the US – from police treatment to the issues of education and job opportunities. In America, however, such cases are being discussed publically.

The practice of photography is no longer a means for recording reality. Instead, it has become reality itself

By participating in the society we live in, we understand our conditions and the way we relate to the world.

They see how dramatic U.S. has to be put this kind of shame on its own – cannot handle the situation. Or show such a difficulty with this liberal ideas. Men or women created equal. And to defend those very essential ideas.

I’ve never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day.

If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach.

A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.

Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.

Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Building a wardrobe is like building a circle of friends your whole life…. Your own beauty is to be yourself, but of course we need tools and accessories.

On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

In a narrow circle the mind grows narrow. The more one expands, the larger their aims.