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I'm most embarrassed at my art shows, even though I don't show it.

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
Art
Shows
Even
Embarrassed
Though
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More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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I hope that my work expresses my worldview and encourages people to exchange ideas.
Ai Weiwei
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You see so many people doing quite nice and respectful work, but nobody like Warhol. Warhol is outstanding. I think he has a value that is far from fully understood. He's very special for younger generations.
Ai Weiwei
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The Internet has established a public sphere and developed a pressure which the government can no longer ignore.
Ai Weiwei
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Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what's on his mind. A fairy tale has come true.
Ai Weiwei
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If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?
Ai Weiwei
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The freedom of speech is an important yardstick for a society's level of civilization.
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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To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.
Ai Weiwei
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Creativity is the power to act.
Ai Weiwei
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Liberty is about the right to question everything.
Ai Weiwei
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All the auction houses care about is the selling of luxury goods.
Ai Weiwei
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Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you. But personally, I don't think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it's beyond my own consciousness.
Ai Weiwei
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Recently I danced in a video spoof of the song 'Gangnam Style,' and it was quickly banned across multiple Chinese online video platforms. But the story still traveled all over the world, carried in hundreds of international media reports.
Ai Weiwei
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The society was so different [in China] - it was a feudalistic society. It didn't come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
Ai Weiwei
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I never think any place is better than others.
Ai Weiwei
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A society is healthy only when it allows its members to discuss their thoughts openly. This is also the only way that a society can gather consensus, let everyone express his or her wish, and foster creativity.
Ai Weiwei
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Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
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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Destroy or build. Crazy or noncrazy. I'm not nostalgic about the old city. I don't enjoy it that much.
Ai Weiwei
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We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
Ai Weiwei