Ai Weiwei
Leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural and social commentator and activist.
"The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay."
"They don’t believe in liberty. They don’t believe in China before the Communists. There is only one simple, clear task: to protect their control, to maintain their governing. Which is such a pity."
"It’s never about me. [My supporters] use me as a mark for themselves to recognize their own form of life: I become their medium. I am always very clear about that."
"I don’t feel powerful at all. I am still under this kind of detention, and you know, this is kind of a bail. Even yesterday I realized while trying to take care of the baby, [at] the park, [I had] been secretly followed and it’s quite fragile. Maybe being powerful means to be fragile."
"It’s hard to recover. You become not so innocent. You become, in a way, more sophisticated, which I think you shouldn’t. We should all have more simple happiness . . . . You become bitter."
"Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again . . . ."
"The population is in a constant state of enforced dislocation. So let us hope that a totally new culture will come out of this."
"People have said, if you leave, you may never come back. Or they may not even let you leave. So this is always a cost you may have to pay. But I don’t want to restrict myself: When it happens, it happens. I have to deal with it, but not to prepare for it, because it is a kind of stupidity. If you prepare for it too much, you become a part of it."
"If there is one who’s not free, then I am not free. If there is one who suffers, then I suffer."
"Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one."
"Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward."
"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."
"They just don’t trust people. They don’t trust individuals, they don’t trust any change that should serve and benefit people, and they try to stop it."
"China has not established the rule of law and thus there is no justice."
"Do they want me to stay? Do they want me to leave? Do they want me to hang myself? To kill myself? What do they want?"
"The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China."
"Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something."
"No outdoor sports can be more elegant than throwing stones at autocracy; no melees can be more exciting than those in cyberspace."
"The language of communication will always need to be renewed."
"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."