Quote

I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.

Ai Weiwei

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Desert
Grew
Imagination
Kind

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

Image
Artists are the worst [people]. They are selfish, self-centred they don't care what happens.
Ai Weiwei
Image
The practice of photography is no longer a means for recording reality. Instead, it has become reality itself
Ai Weiwei
Image
If I really have nothing to do, I just watch my cats, take some photos, and go back to my personal blog.
Ai Weiwei
Image
I don't think China has professional museums - not in the past, present, or near future.
Ai Weiwei
Image
I never had secure, belonging feelings with this society [in China].
Ai Weiwei
Image
China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.
Ai Weiwei
Image
If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection then? That's why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or I am so charming. People feel: This guy is fighting for us.
Ai Weiwei
Image
The [China] government has improved in the last years. Of course, the structure is still the same there's still a one-party system and strong censorship.
Ai Weiwei
Image
The society was so different [in China] - it was a feudalistic society. It didn't come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
Ai Weiwei
Image
Mass production is nothing new. Weren't cathedrals built through mass production? The pyramids?... Paintings can be painted with the left hand, the right hand, someone else's hand, or many people's hands. The scale of production is irrelevant to its content.
Ai Weiwei
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.
Ai Weiwei
Image
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
Image
New York has given me a lot, but I still don't consider it home.
Ai Weiwei
Image
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.
Ai Weiwei
Image
China restricts the society's freedom of speech. The Communist Party imposes these limits because it lacks confidence towards the future and has no ideals. Nowadays, China is experiencing the detrimental effects of such decisions. Its citizens have no creativity.
Ai Weiwei
Image
A historical property has morals and ethics of the society that created it and it can be revived. What I mean is that we can discover new possibilities from the process of dismantling, transforming, and recreating.
Ai Weiwei
Image
The fantasy we had with pearls was always so luxurious and unique with a kind of rareness.
Ai Weiwei
Image
To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.
Ai Weiwei