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[Cultural departments] don't care about culture. Maybe they're the furthest from the people who understand 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
Understand
Culture
Care
People
Furthest
Departments
Cultural
Department
Maybe

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I think art is a very important weapon to achieve human freedom
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You're still being looked at as somebody who - it's a very complicated issue.
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Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things it is no longer so much about producing something.
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The media is the message. It carries the full intention and the meaning. Once you change it...it's very disturbing.
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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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I don't believe in the so-called Olympic spirit. I speak from personal experience. When China hosted the Games, it failed to include the people. The event was constructed without regard for their joy.
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Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources.
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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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Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don't think art is elite or mysterious.
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Creativity is the power to act.
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I think the pearls - one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl - really show a kind of [society] condition.
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For artists and intellectuals today, what is most needed is to be clear about social responsibility, because that is what most people automatically give up. Just to protect yourself as an individual is very political. You don't have to march on Tiananmen, but you do have to be clear-minded, to find your own means of expression.
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As a human being, member of society, you must clearly state your mind. It's a responsibility. It is the way you identify yourself otherwise you don't know who you are and why you are here.
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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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If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.
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I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we'll have competition. And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would've lost the ground to win.
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For all the tough talk about China during the presidential debates, Romney and Obama evaded any mention of China's suspect human rights record, corruption, and rule of law. By not tackling these controversial topics, the candidates are protecting a strategic partnership with China at the expense of essential human values and beliefs.
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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.
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Beijing is constructing a 100,000 m2 modern art museum, yet it will not feature any of my work.
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Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.
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