I think it’s quite narrow-minded. There wasn’t much encouragement or opportunities for any artist – not just Chinese artists.
AI WEIWEIWe are living in a popular culture where everything is overexposed.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I don’t think I was very structured in that society and I don’t really believe in personal success, which most Americans believe in.
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If civil society has nobody who protects the law, then what kind of society is that?
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Even if there have been setbacks during these past years, China is changing. China’s society is opening.
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[Cultural departments] don’t care about culture. Maybe they’re the furthest from the people who understand culture.
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A clear understanding of such differences will help the rest of the world understand China and all that is happening to the nation.
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To give a price to an artwork, no matter how high or low, is always absurd. It’s not something that can be measured by money or by certain numbers.
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You don’t have to march on Tiananmen, but you do have to be clear-minded, to find your own means of expression.
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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.
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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.
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Destroy or build. Crazy or noncrazy. I’m not nostalgic about the old city. I don’t enjoy it that much.
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In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society.
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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.
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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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They very often just try to cope with their own election, their own popularity, solving the problem or selling the ideas to meet their own voters. By doing that, it creates a great imbalance in terms of making deals or treaty or all those things.
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I have people working together, doing different things: architecture, art installation, photography, publishing, and curatorial works and design.
AI WEIWEI






