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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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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
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Warhol
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More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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I'm a free man now, except I cannot leave China. You know, I have no desire to travel. I have so many things to do I cannot finish them now.
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In the '80s, you couldn't walk in the neighborhood without looking back to see if anyone was following you. You had your key in your hand before you got to your apartment and you'd rush in so you didn't have to stop.
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I was an illegal alien for many, many years. I couldn't move. If I moved I could not even get a visa back.
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I remember one little rainy day I went searching for this apartment and I saw so many people standing on a stoop on the corner in the rain. Later I realized, that was drug traffic. They were all buying drugs.
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Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.
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Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market. In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society.
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Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.
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In China, we don't have any contemporary art museums. Until a few years ago, we didn't even have a gallery.
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Even though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that's the 1980s. New York in the '80s was not so interesting. I think it's quite narrow-minded. There wasn't much encouragement or opportunities for any artist - not just Chinese artists.
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My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall.
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Each year, more people want to become artists.
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That's why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.
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I saw [Allen Ginsberg] more as an old man who liked poetry and who had a lot of physical and emotional problems. We liked our time together.
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Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.
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By participating in the society we live in, we understand our conditions and the way we relate to the world.
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Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.
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Today, we jump into this globalization of the economy and the internet age.
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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.
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There's no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don't think there's anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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