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...photographs are facts, but not necessarily true... The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.

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
Today
Necessarily
Always
Photograph
Present
Future
Facts
True
Past
Surpasses
Care
Photographs

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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Liberty is about the right to question everything.
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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Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product it's an understanding of human nature.
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I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable — how we decide what is valuable.
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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The world is sphere, has no East or West.
Ai Weiwei
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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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Society becomes very destructive.
Ai Weiwei
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Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it.
Ai Weiwei
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As a total activity - I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.
Ai Weiwei
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Many people I know - writers, poets - they have all been sentenced not once but sometimes three times after they come out. They serve five or six years, come out another time, and then nine years. Come out again, 12 years. Only because they have a different opinion. They are innocent people, they have beautiful minds, beautiful hearts.
Ai Weiwei
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Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years, anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.
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.
Ai Weiwei
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I think we cannot have a double standard. We cannot see our art as different from the reality. We cannot use two different sets of judgment.
Ai Weiwei
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We have to give our opinion, we have to say something, or we are a part of it. As an artist I am forced to say something.
Ai Weiwei
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Because Chinese art is booming, it legitimizes this profession.
Ai Weiwei
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I don't think there is a distinct change, because in the West I'm not a person who can serve his purpose.
Ai Weiwei
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I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.
Ai Weiwei
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The whole attitude of society has become much more open and realistic. They realize that the only way to make a more democratic and free society is to let different opinions come out.
Ai Weiwei
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Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources.
Ai Weiwei