Ai Weiwei - Art Quotes

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I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art.

Ai Weiwei
I definitely know people who are shameless enough to give up basic values. I see this kind of art, and when I see it I feel ashamed. In China they treat art as some form of decoration, a self-indulgence. It is pretending to be art. It looks like art. It sells like art. But it is really a piece of shit.

Ai Weiwei
My activism is a part of me. If my art has anything to do with me, then my activism is part of my art.

Ai Weiwei
Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. I don't feel that much anger. I equally have a lot of joy.

Ai Weiwei
I don't really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What's life if you don't have conversation and joy and anger?

Ai Weiwei
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. 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. I don't think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.

Ai Weiwei
I always want to design a frame that's open to everyone. I don't see art as a secret code.

Ai Weiwei
I came to art because I wanted to escape the other regulations of the society. The whole society is so political. But the irony is that my art becomes more and more political.

Ai Weiwei
Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.

Ai Weiwei
Contemporary art and the [Communist] Party are an impossible situation. It's like oil and water—they can never mix.

Ai Weiwei
I don't have this concept that separates my art from my daily life. They are one thing to me. They are always one. How do you find the way to express yourself and how to communicate with others?

Ai Weiwei
It's really life and death [not art]. When they tell you your mother is 80 years old but you cannot see her again, you can never call it performance art. Or when your son is three, and they tell you that when you are released he will be in his teens and can never recognize you as a father. You feel terrible inside, to lose those chances. Each day, they tell you, 'You will spend your life day after day the same, minute after minute the same. You just have to pay [with] your life for this kind of so-called freedom that you are fighting for.' There is no sense of justice there. Why do I have to do this with them? Why do I have to argue or play this game?

Ai Weiwei
The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.

Ai Weiwei
Very few people know why art sells so high. I don't even know.

Ai Weiwei
Living in a system under the Communist ideology, an artist cannot avoid fighting for freedom of expression. You always have to be aware that art is not only a self-expression but a demonstration of human rights and dignity. To express yourself freely, a right as personal as it is, has always been difficult, given the political situation.

Ai Weiwei
Art is always about overcoming obstacles between the inner condition and the skill for expression.

Ai Weiwei
I think art certainly is the vehicle for us to develop any new ideas, to be creative, to extend our imagination, to change the current conditions.

Ai Weiwei
I spend very little time just doing ' art as art.'

Ai Weiwei
I'm not sure I'm good at art, but I find an escape in it.

Ai Weiwei
I think all aesthetic judgments—all the aesthetic choices we are making—are moral choices. They cannot escape the moral dimension in the broader sense. It has to relate to the philosophical understanding of who we are and how so-called art and culture functions in today's world.

Ai Weiwei