Quote

A city is a place that can offer maximum freedom. Otherwise it’s incomplete.

Ai Weiwei

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Ai Weiwei
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Architect
Consultant
Contemporary Artist
Designer
Film Director
Human Rights Activist
Painter
Photographer
Sculptor
Social Activist
Peking
Wei-wei Ai
Weiwei Ai
Ai Wei Wei
Place
Incomplete
Maximum
Offer
Otherwise
Offers
City
Cities
Freedom

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection then? That's why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or I am so charming. People feel: This guy is fighting for us.
Ai Weiwei
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We are living in a popular culture where everything is overexposed.
Ai Weiwei
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I will never leave China, unless I am forced to. Because China is mine. I will not leave something that belongs to me in the hands of people I do not trust.
Ai Weiwei
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I call on people to be 'obsessed citizens,' forever questioning and asking for accountability. That's the only chance we have today of a healthy and happy life.
Ai Weiwei
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Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?
Ai Weiwei
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When I first got into the first-year study after the Cultural Revolution, got into the same school with this group, I wasn't conscious of the so-called Fifth Generation. I didn't like that kind of study condition because there's no real, true education there.
Ai Weiwei
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If there is no freedom of expression, then the beauty of life is lost. Participation in a society is not an artistic choice, it’s a human need.
Ai Weiwei
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[Museums] all belongs to the cultural department, which is the biggest cultural department in the world.
Ai Weiwei
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My image of what a city should be - the super-rich and all the poor and desperate and the people who have some kind of a desire. It's a surviving game, people trying to survive on many different levels.
Ai Weiwei
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To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.
Ai Weiwei
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For artists and intellectuals today, what is most needed is to be clear about social responsibility, because that is what most people automatically give up. Just to protect yourself as an individual is very political. You don't have to march on Tiananmen, but you do have to be clear-minded, to find your own means of expression.
Ai Weiwei
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We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.
Ai Weiwei
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If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.
Ai Weiwei
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All the auction houses care about is the selling of luxury goods.
Ai Weiwei
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Every day I'm learning something new from the practice. It's very rewarding.
Ai Weiwei
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I think I'm just a traveler. When you walk across a river and there's no bridge, you build one. I'm used to having to deal with Chinese Communist ideology - it's not really an ideology, but a method of control. But China's problems are not just China's problems - they're human problems. Humanity has always worked better when you see it as one.
Ai Weiwei
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I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture.
Ai Weiwei
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I have people working together, doing different things: architecture, art installation, photography, publishing, and curatorial works and design.
Ai Weiwei
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I believe [the architecture firm] Herzog and de Meuron and our collaboration made the product the best it could be.
Ai Weiwei
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Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.
Ai Weiwei