Everyone thinks the Chinese government selected me. Never ever. I was selected by Herzog and de Meuron.
AI WEIWEIOrdinary 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.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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We are not on – even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.
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If it’s possible, I will have some noodles in the morning and start talking to people, start to think about a few things in my head.
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[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.
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Nowadays, China is experiencing the detrimental effects of such decisions. Its citizens have no creativity.
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As a total activity – I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.
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The freedom of speech is an important yardstick for a society’s level of civilization.
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We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet.
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You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.
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I don’t like China. Even today, I still feel I have no emotional relations with this place.
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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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Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.
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I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
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I don’t think my father had a direct influence on me, but I do think, more or less, I was influenced by his independent individualism.
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Just look at the statistics: Each university has tens of thousands of applications for students who want to be in art school, but they can only accept a few hundred.
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A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.
AI WEIWEI