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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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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
Cultural
Department
Biggest
World
Museums
Belongs
More quotes by Ai Weiwei
A nation like China has become one of the biggest production fields for exporting cheap labor, which also re-questions our history and past, re-questions human desire, and the human illusions of the past.
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If there's the right condition, I always want to express the concept or ideas in a very independent way.
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I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
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If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?
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My angst and my insecurity reflect the state's angst and insecurity. The state is scared too.
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This week, the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years. People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China's relationship with the outside world.
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Historically, China is not a nation of sportsmen. We traditionally put more emphasis on being close to nature than pushing endlessly to excel. A philosophy that values tranquil contemplation of the landscape cannot easily be adapted to the Olympic slogan of 'higher, stronger, faster.'
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To survive, China had to open up to the West. It could not survive otherwise. This was after many millions have died of hunger in a country that was like North Korea is today. Once we became part of global competition, we had to agree to some rules. It's painful, but we had to. Otherwise there was no way to survive.
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In the end, I think, the state's rigidity is a function of its own insecurity, its indecisiveness.
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For years, I refused to go to any openings, not even my own.
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China partially wants to become part of the world. By hosting the Olympics and the Expo, they made a big effort to tell people: Look, we are the same. They want to be accepted by the international community.
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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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Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
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Individual that means he has his own special way to communicate, which creates the form of him. In the information age, this expression and communication has become so different.
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I'm always interested in people who are not orientated in art circles to become part of it.
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I don't believe in a sense of home.
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If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?
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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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Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.
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Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
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