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New York is a city where you're so alone, you're an individual, you can disappear. You can make something happen. But it's very different to make something happen in the art world.

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
Alone
Individual
Art
Happens
Disappear
Different
York
Something
City
Make
Cities
World
Happen

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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I never had a sense of home.
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I don't personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.
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As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am. As long as I can communicate, I'm not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn't matter at all.
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If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.
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I think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it's very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.
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I never regret anything.
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China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities.
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My childhood was quite extreme. Sometimes I was so weak I could not stand up. But now I am so strong. Life is unpredictable
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If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.
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If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values.
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These are nonviolent people who have lost their freedom simply because they expressed their ideas….In truth, they are heroes of our time.
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If civil society has nobody who protects the law, then what kind of society is that?
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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.
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I think art certainly is the vehicle for us to develop any new ideas, to be creative, to extend our imagination, to change the current conditions.
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I'm not nostalgic about the old city. I don't enjoy it that much. It was just a city with one emperor and the rest of them just rats or meaningless people.
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[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.
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Through my work and ways of expression, I strive to engage in dialogue with the society that I am living in.
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It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
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New York has given me a lot, but I still don't consider it home.
Ai Weiwei
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I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.
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