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Ai Weiwei Quotes
born 1957 China
Ai Weiwei (Chinese: 艾未未; born 1957 in Beijing) is a leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural and social commentator and activist.
Random Ai Weiwei quote
164 quotes
I want people to see their own power.
My favorite word? It’s 'act.'
I think we have too much history. It’s not so important. I think people should have fun and enjoy their own time. I haven’t done much, so why should I waste people’s memory?"
The Chinese [government] only superficially speaks the language of the international community.
We have to give our opinion, we have to say something, or we are a part of it. As an artist I am forced to say something.
It doesn’t matter where I am—China will stay in me. I don’t know how far I can still walk on this road and what is the limit.
They all ask: Why? Why is it that this man’s name [Ai Weiwei] can never be typed on a Chinese computer or the whole sentence will disappear?
I think I have this responsibility to my father’s generation, and especially future generations.
I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
I want to prove that the system is not working. . . . . You can’t simply say that the system is not working. You have to work through it
I loved New York—every inch of it. It was a little bit scary at that time, but still, the excitement was so strong—visually and intellectually. It was like a monster.
There is no revolution like the Communist revolution. You simply burn all the books, kill all of the thinking people and use the poor proletariat to create a very simple benchmark to gauge social change.
Myself, I try to search for the new way, always trying to set up a new possibility and to find the new tools to express myself. To reach a broader audience.
I don’t know about five years from now. I have no plans for that. Maybe I’ll be forgotten by then.
I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable—how we decide what is valuable.
I don’t see myself as a dissident artist. I see them as a dissident government!
My messages are temporary and shouldn’t be our permanent condition. And like the wind it will pass. We’ll have another wind coming.
I think art certainly is the vehicle for us to develop any new ideas, to be creative, to extend our imagination, to change the current conditions.
Once again, the facts have been erased.
We need to get out of the old language.
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