Ai Weiwei
Leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural and social commentator and activist.
"Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare."
"My work has always been political, because the choice of being an artist is political in China."
"Overturning police cars is a super-intense workout. It’s probably the only sport I enjoy."
"The world is a sphere, there is no East or West."
"Neither fairness nor justice, neither reality nor humanity can be simulated or manipulated by wires or remote controls."
"You see a Party system that crushes down anybody who [has] different opinions, who has different ideas in their mind. Simply to have different opinions can cost someone their life. They can be put in jail, they can be silenced, and they can [disappear]. And the other people would take it, not giving support."
"Everything is art. Everything is politics."
"China [is a] society which forbids any flow of the information and freedom of speech. This is on record, so everybody should know this."
"I always want to design a frame that’s open to everyone. I don’t see art as a secret code."
"I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art."
"I think right now is the moment. This is the beginning. We don’t know what is it the moment of, and maybe something much crazier will happen. But really, we see the sunshine coming in. It was clouded for maybe a hundred years. Our whole condition was very sad, but we still feel warmth, and the life in our bodies can still tell that there is excitement in there, even though death is waiting. We had better not enjoy the moment, but create the moment."
"I always have an attitude. Even if there are no plans, I have an attitude. Perhaps I answered imprecisely before, saying that I am just a person. I am actually a person with an attitude."
"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."
"In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want—not only you, your whole family and all people like you."
"My activism is a part of me. If my art has anything to do with me, then my activism is part of my art."
"The officials want China to be seen as a cultured, creative nation, but in this anti-liberal political society everything outside the direct control of the state is seen as a potential threat."
"Modernism represents a true kind of living. Modernism is not about form or method or the works of a few artists, but rather about a necessary way of living. And only this kind of lifestyle can save China, because if we don’t have modernism, then we will die under the grasp of one or another ideology. Modernism at least says that every person is free and needs to honestly encounter his own life."
"The people who control culture in China have no culture."
"We need to get out of the old language."
"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."