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[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.

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
Affair
Daily
Understand
Culture
Care
Bureaucratic
Nothing
Affairs
Cultural
Department

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In my life, I often make so-called major decisions by very quick, immediate responses.
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Art needs to stand for something.
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My mother became much older when I came out (ed's note: of detention). She had problems with her hearing and high blood pressure. But they still support me.
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I don't believe in a sense of home.
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I always want to design a frame that’s open to everyone. I don’t see art as a secret code.
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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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I never think any place is better than others.
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Even if there have been setbacks during these past years, China is changing. China's society is opening.
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To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.
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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.
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Politics is like air and water. And you know if there is bad politics. Everyone is polluted. Everyone is unhealthy. See the people walking on the street: how they act.
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[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I've been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.
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The purpose of art is the fight for freedom.
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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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Any politician who respects China's government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues - both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.
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At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.
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We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.
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Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it.
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The rest of the world understands little about China's changes and the possibilities and crises that come with them.
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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.
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