By participating in the society we live in, we understand our conditions and the way we relate to the world.
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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I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out.
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The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality, basic human rights, freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.
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I never had a sense of home.
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There’s no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
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Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something.
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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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Nothing is clear-cut. Perhaps I’ll find my way – or get totally lost.
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I think Allen [Ginsberg] was a person who’s like a child.
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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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Now you have the equal opportunity to equip yourself through information and knowledge and express yourself as an independent mind.
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Selling high or low doesn’t mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.
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Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.
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I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art.
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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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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.
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