Ai Weiwei Quotes
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Later I became very involved in writing. I really enjoyed that moment of writing. People would pass around my sentences. That was a feeling I never had before. It was like a bullet out of the gun.
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Living in a system under the Communist ideology, an artist cannot avoid fighting for freedom of expression. You always have to be aware that art is not only a self-expression but a demonstration of human rights and dignity. To express yourself freely, a right as personal as it is, has always been difficult, given the political situation.
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Tradition is only a readymade. It’s for us to make a new gesture-to use it as a reference, more as a starting point than conclusion. Of course, there are very different attitudes and interpretations about our past and our memory of it. And ours is never a complete one, but is broken. In China, but also in my practice.
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Nothing can silence me as long as I am alive. I don’t give any kind of excuse. If I cannot come out of China or I cannot go in to China this is not going to change my belief. But when I am there, I am in this condition: I see it, I see people who need help. Then you know, I just want to offer my possibility to help them.
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I think it’s a responsibility for any artist to protect freedom of expression and to use any way to extend this power.
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The disaster-makers always get away, while the innocent are always punished.
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At midnight they can come into your room and take you away. They can put a black hood on you, take you to a secret place and interrogate you, trying to stop what you’re doing. They threaten people, your family, saying: 'Your children won’t find jobs.'
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I have the responsibility to let the people know what happened to me, and did I commit the crime or if I didn’t, what is the real accusation? Why am I in this condition today? I think it reflects our human condition in this piece of land, and if I don’t bear some responsibility . . . . many, many people, their voice can never be heard.
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The people who control culture in China have no culture.
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I try to encourage people to look at our past in a critical way because as our education, we have a great, great history. But in reality we are poorest in ethics and philosophy, so I try to raise people’s consciousness on how we deal with our past.
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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.
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When I checked into a hospital in Germany, after having been beaten by police in Sichuan, I was told there was bleeding in my brain and I was near fatal collapse. I was rushed into surgery. When I awoke I felt like a normal person again. But I will not feel whole until I and my fellow Chinese can live freely.
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When I returned to China from the United States, I didn’t have a U.S. passport, a wife, or a university degree. From the Chinese point of view, I was a total failure.
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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.
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Not an inch of the land belongs to you, but every inch could easily imprison you.
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Art is always about overcoming obstacles between the inner condition and the skill for expression.
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What does it matter if China’s economy grows when there are no basic protections for its citizens?
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People often say I started to become too outspoken after a certain period. It’s all because of the Internet. If we didn’t have this technology I would be same as everybody else. I couldn’t really amplify my voice.
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I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
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On the Internet, people do not know each other, they don’t have common leaders, sometimes not even a common political goal. But they come together on certain issues. I think that is a miracle. It never happened in the past. Without the Internet, I would not even be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist somewhere doing my shows.
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The Olympics are an event manipulated into misleading people into believing that we have entered a new, successful and harmonious period in our history. This is not true.
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I see myself not as a leader but as somebody who initiates things or finds the problem or provokes a discussion. You have to be always ready to engage, willing to participate. When events or history happen, you just have to be aware and respond.
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But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice.
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If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.