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I have people working together, doing different things: architecture, art installation, photography, publishing, and curatorial works and design.

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
Together
Installation
Different
Publishing
Things
Architecture
People
Photography
Works
Design
Working
Art

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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A society is healthy only when it allows its members to discuss their thoughts openly. This is also the only way that a society can gather consensus, let everyone express his or her wish, and foster creativity.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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Everyone thinks the Chinese government selected me. Never ever. I was selected by Herzog and de Meuron.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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I think everybody deserves freedom. Freedom is such an abstract word, but it's all we need.
Ai Weiwei
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If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values.
Ai Weiwei
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I don't think China should care if this crazy old guy should have a show here or not. You have so many museums in the West, and so many shows, you need somebody to show the work, otherwise it's empty.
Ai Weiwei
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The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that's all I know.
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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If I look at it, I would laugh. I don't know how I became successful.
Ai Weiwei
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Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.
Ai Weiwei
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I suddenly realized I was getting ten opening notes a day on my mobile phone, more than when I was in New York. But this is China, where nothing is surprising.
Ai Weiwei
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Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be.
Ai Weiwei
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We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It's very materialistic. It's full of desire and luxury goods.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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Warhol influenced me because of his writing. If I had never read his writings and interviews, I would never have understood his work.
Ai Weiwei
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We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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I often feel more disgust than pride about this kind of success. So there's no regret whatsoever.
Ai Weiwei
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I also doubt a man can give really clear reasons for anything.
Ai Weiwei