Ai Weiwei - China Quotes

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China [is a] society which forbids any flow of the information and freedom of speech. This is on record, so everybody should know this.

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
Modernism represents a true kind of living. Modernism is not about form or method or the works of a few artists, but rather about a necessary way of living. And only this kind of lifestyle can save China, because if we don't have modernism, then we will die under the grasp of one or another ideology. Modernism at least says that every person is free and needs to honestly encounter his own life.

Ai Weiwei
China has not established the rule of law and thus there is no justice.

Ai Weiwei
My work has always been political, because the choice of being an artist is political in China.

Ai Weiwei
Tradition is only a readymade. It's for us to make a new gesture—to use it as a reference, more as a starting point than conclusion. Of course, there are very different attitudes and interpretations about our past and our memory of it. And ours is never a complete one, but is broken. In China, but also in my practice.

Ai Weiwei
The 81 days of detention were a nightmare. I am not unique; it happened to many people in China. Conditions were extreme, created by a system that thinks it is above the law and has become a kind of monstrous machine. There were so many moments when I felt desperate and hopeless. But still, the next morning, I heard the birds singing.

Ai Weiwei
Because of the economic crisis, China and the United States are bound together. This is a totally new phenomenon, and nobody will fight for ideology anymore. It's all about business.

Ai Weiwei
Nothing can silence me as long as I am alive. I don't give any kind of excuse. If I cannot come out [of China] or I cannot go in [to China] this is not going to change my belief. But when I am there, I am in this condition: I see it, I see people who need help. Then you know, I just want to offer my possibility to help them.

Ai Weiwei
Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their own laws.

Ai Weiwei
They don't believe in liberty. They don't believe in China before the Communists. There is only one simple, clear task: to protect their control, to maintain their governing. Which is such a pity.

Ai Weiwei
To what degree does it help us to change our life, or even to sense our existence, to really evaluate why? I think those questions cannot be escaped. Sometimes in history it's more hidden; somewhere these can be very personal and individual questions. But in certain times and certain places, your existence has to be associated with other people's situations. You have to make a reaction to the living conditions. It's not avoidable. You cannot just be blind about what is happening there. Such is the case in China.

Ai Weiwei
You can see China still cannot offer any real value to the world except as cheap labor, manufacturer, and its own so-called stability. Besides that, I don't see any creative values and creative mind or thinking [that] can be announced from China. So this is the struggle China has to face in the next decades.

Ai Weiwei
I think strategically China has come to a very crucial moment. They [the government] have to re-justify themselves. Even the past 20 to 30 years are based on a kind of destructive, suicidal act. Now they are trying to reach a higher level, but I think in any society, culture should have its own rights: not to be touched by the government, not to be promoted by the government, also not to be destroyed by the government.

Ai Weiwei
I think China is in a chaos now and it could be more chaos. It's an orderly chaos. It's a party that ruthlessly violates every human's basic rights to serve its own purpose.

Ai Weiwei
China might seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only raised the water level. It's like building a dam: it thinks there is more water so it will build higher. But every drop of water is still in there. It doesn't understand how to let the pressure out. It builds up a way to maintain control and push the problem to the next generation.

Ai Weiwei
When I returned to China [from the United States], I didn't have a U.S. passport, a wife, or a university degree. From the Chinese point of view, I was a total failure.

Ai Weiwei
To protect the right of expression is the central part of an artist's activity..... In China many essential rights are lacking, and I wanted to remind people of this.

Ai Weiwei
The 2008 Olympics has created an illusion of China to the public and to the outside world. It is so fantastic, so unreal, that the entire meaning of the games is being distorted.

Ai Weiwei
I will never leave China, unless I am forced to. Because China is mine. I will not leave something that belongs to me in the hands of people I do not trust.

Ai Weiwei
In talking about memory and our history, I think our humanity, especially in China, is cut. Cut, broken, separated. If we have a character from our history and memory, the character is broken, it's shattered.

Ai Weiwei
Writers, artists, and commentators on websites are detained or thrown into jail when they reflect on democracy, opening up, reform and reason. This is the reality of China.

Ai Weiwei
What does it matter if China's economy grows when there are no basic protections for its citizens?

Ai Weiwei
Today, the West feels very shy about human rights and the political situation. They're in need of money. But every penny they borrowed or made from China has really come as a result of how this nation sacrificed everybody's rights. With globalization and the Internet, we all know it. Don't pretend you don't know it. The Western politicians—shame on them if they say they're not responsible for this. It's getting worse, and it will keep getting worse.

Ai Weiwei
The officials want China to be seen as a cultured, creative nation, but in this anti-liberal political society everything outside the direct control of the state is seen as a potential threat.

Ai Weiwei
Today China and the world will meet again. People will see that the planet is now smaller than at any time in history, that mankind should bid farewell to arrogance and indifference, to ignorance and discrimination, and understand that we share the same small piece of land. It will be a time to rediscover each other, to share what is good in life, to look each other in the eye and link all ten fingers.

Ai Weiwei
In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed. Just take the example from yesterday: I had given a telephone interview to CNN. Then, suddenly, CNN was shut down for a couple of minutes. It was the first time I experienced that my television went totally dead. I realized: Oh my God, it's because of me. This is crazy! Which nation would do that? Maybe Cuba, North Korea, China. But what do they want, what are they so afraid of?

Ai Weiwei
The people who control culture in China have no culture.

Ai Weiwei
It is absurd that so much money has been wasted on manipulating public opinion, on simulating emotion. This nation is notorious for its ability to make or fake anything cheaply. Made-in-China goods now fill homes around the world. But our giant country has a small problem. We can't manufacture the happiness of our people.

Ai Weiwei
It doesn't matter where I am—China will stay in me. I don't know how far I can still walk on this road and what is the limit.

Ai Weiwei