If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?
AI WEIWEIMy angst and my insecurity reflect the state’s angst and insecurity. The state is scared too.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
-
-
I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.
AI WEIWEI -
I think I’m just a traveler. When you walk across a river and there’s no bridge, you build one. I’m used to having to deal with Chinese Communist ideology.
AI WEIWEI -
I never had a sense of home.
AI WEIWEI -
I think China is laughing about the results of the presidential elections. China, Russia, they all laugh about it.
AI WEIWEI -
China didn’t want to lose the cutting edge of technology. So the idea of having a Sina Weibo was an attempt to compete with Twitter. However, it has no soul – which is freedom of expression. Nevertheless,
AI WEIWEI -
Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.
AI WEIWEI -
If a master, a wise and experienced man, wields a great weapon, that’s beautiful. He can serve peace with it. But if someone’s emotions are imbalanced, even if he has the best equipment,
AI WEIWEI -
A lot of the time [in the U.S.], I was thinking about how spending time is always questionable or is always the biggest obstacle in my life.
AI WEIWEI -
The leadership knows that you cannot solve the issues of China’s future with the means of the past. The demographic consequences of the one-child policy, the build-up of the welfare state.
AI WEIWEI -
If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I’m saying is common sense.
AI WEIWEI -
For years, I refused to go to any openings, not even my own.
AI WEIWEI -
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.
AI WEIWEI -
He will still mean danger. Modern technology requires calm. You shouldn’t trust anyone with a car who has no knowledge about vehicles or roads.
AI WEIWEI -
Chinese government is very clearly losing power in every aspect, but trying to fix up all the problems or potential problems.
AI WEIWEI -
To call yourself a Chinese artist or woman artist or African artist reflects a certain kind of condition. To me, that is not necessary.
AI WEIWEI -
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.
AI WEIWEI -
It’s really rubbish that some kind of “technical” learning means you will be a better person because you know this skill better.
AI WEIWEI -
Now I’ve come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable.
AI WEIWEI -
My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.
AI WEIWEI -
Nationality and borders are barriers to our intelligence, to our imagination and to all kinds of possibilities.
AI WEIWEI -
Creativity is part of human nature. It can only be untaught.
AI WEIWEI -
Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
AI WEIWEI -
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.
AI WEIWEI -
The relationship between the Chinese government and me is like a Cold War.
AI WEIWEI -
Technology is a liberation. I think the information age probably is the best thing to happen to the human race in human evolution.
AI WEIWEI -
Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
AI WEIWEI