Ai Weiwei

They [the government] really want to maintain power. At the same time, they refuse to communicate. They refuse to have good intentions. They refuse to be sincere. How can that last?

Later I became very involved in writing. I really enjoyed that moment of writing. People would pass around my sentences. That was a feeling I never had before. It was like a bullet out of the gun.

I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.

I cannot ever accept the kind of conditions where you can sacrifice someone’s rights.

We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?'

To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.

Art is not an end but a beginning.

I think I have this responsibility to my father’s generation, and especially future generations.

If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.

On the Internet, people do not know each other, they don’t have common leaders, sometimes not even a common political goal. But they come together on certain issues. I think that is a miracle. It never happened in the past. Without the Internet, I would not even be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist somewhere doing my shows.

This is something you can never erase. It leaves a scar on you.

They [the government] cannot stop people from communicating freely, to get information and to express themselves. When they do that, this nation is not a right place to live. They sacrifice generations of people’s opportunities. This is a crime.

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."

It’s hard to recover. You become not so innocent. You become, in a way, more sophisticated, which I think you shouldn’t. We should all have more simple happiness . . . . You become bitter.

During my detention, they kept asking me: Ai Weiwei, what is the reason you have become like this today? My answer is: First, I refuse to forget. My parents, my family, their whole generation and my generation all paid a great deal in the struggle for freedom of speech. Many people died just because of one sentence or even one word. Somebody has to take responsibility for that.

Maybe there is something I got from it. Maybe you also start to be clear on certain things.

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

Do they want me to stay? Do they want me to leave? Do they want me to hang myself? To kill myself? What do they want?

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.

Citizens should bear the responsibility to act.

There were thousands of moving messages. People sent money from their first month’s salary. Others said: This is my retirement payment—take it. This is the money for my next pair of shoes—take it. It was very important for me to see and hear those things. Normally you do not see the warmth, humor, care and generosity of the people while writing a blog. You just feel like you are walking in a dark tunnel and you feel alone.

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.

Nothing. Jail is about nothing. Completely blank.

They detained me for 81 days, but they never killed me. They clearly told me: 'If we were in the Cultural Revolution, you would have been killed 100 times.' They said: 'We have already improved.' I said: 'I thank you very much. Yes, you have improved. Not because you are really willing to improve yourself, but only because improvement is a matter of surviving.'

As an artist, I am very familiar with how to show the details, how to transform them into a language people can understand. They [the government] know that the Internet is a strong force, unbearable for them.

Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again . . . .

I don’t know about five years from now. I have no plans for that. Maybe I’ll be forgotten by then.

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.

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?

My voice is not for me. Every time I make a sentence I think how many people for how many generations had a voice that no one could hear. At most they will be remembered as numbers; in many cases, even numbers don’t exist.