I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.
AI WEIWEIEven though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that’s the 1980s. New York in the ’80s was not so interesting.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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My angst and my insecurity reflect the state’s angst and insecurity. The state is scared too.
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The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern and good intentions.
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We’re different, and you’re dangerous.” That kind of thinking stops human, civilized evolution. It’s dangerous to create that kind of tension.
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China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.
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Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
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The jobs for 7 million university graduates every year, the immense corruption: Even some Western governments would have to scramble to find solutions to such problems.
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You have so many museums in the West, and so many shows, you need somebody to show the work, otherwise it’s empty.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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Censorship is saying: “I’m the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.” But the internet is like a tree that is growing.
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It [success] is really by mistake.
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People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It’s an unbearable condition.
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Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. I don’t feel that much anger. I equally have a lot of joy.
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If I really have nothing to do, I just watch my cats, take some photos, and go back to my personal blog.
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I want people to see their own power.
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How to become a really modern society when today we are so – as a human being, we feel so powerful. We have high technology and a superb way of controlling our life. And at the same time, in many ways we are so primitive.
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