A Quote by Ai Weiwei

[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I've been practicing art and other cultural-related activities. — © Ai Weiwei
[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I've been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.
The entire world of art has reached such a low level, it has been commercialized to such a degree that art and everything related to it has become one of the most trivial activities of our epoch.
I went to an exhibition at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum about Shanghai, about how courtesans had been influential in bringing western culture to Shanghai. I bought a book and in it saw this striking group of women in a photograph called 'The Ten Beauties of Shanghai'.
I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.
Trump and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, have both been criticized during their campaigns for activities related to their foundations.
You get to a point where it gets very complex, where you have money laundering activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points and becoming one.
That President Mohammad Khatami's policies have been blocked is the bitterest incident in the contemporary Iranian history. This means that the wishes of millions of people who voted for Khatami and called for freedom and justice have been ignored... Why should cultural activities and journalism be so risky in Iran?
Cultural speciation had been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth. It had hindered freedom of thought, limited our thinking, imprisoned us in the cultures into which we had been born. . . . These cultural mind prisons. . . . Cultural speciation was clearly a barrier to world peace. So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the ‘global village’ we would propagate prejudice and ignorance.
The arts have long been an integral and vibrant part of our nation's cultural heritage. In its many forms, art enables us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our society. Providing us with a unique way to learn about people of other cultures, it allows us to discover all that we have in common. At its best, art can beautify our cities, encourage economic development and social change, and profoundly affect the ways we live our lives.
I actually no longer use 'art' as the framing device. I think I'm just kind of practicing things, practicing life, practicing creation.
The ideological and cultural revolutions have been promoted successfully in the countryside with the result that the ideological and spiritual qualities of our agricultural working people have been transformed remarkably, and a great development has also been achieved in the realm of cultural life in the countryside.
I was in Shanghai when the Japanese invaded China. I was there in Shanghai when, the morning after Pearl Harbor, they seized Shanghai.
There were no museums or galleries in Shanghai, but I was very keen on art - I was always sketching and copying, and sometimes I think that my whole career as a writer has been the substitute work of an unfulfilled painter.
In the Life of Darwin by his son, there is related an incident of how the great naturalist once studied long as to just what a certain spore was. Finally he said, "It is this, for if it isn't, then what is it?" And all during his life he was never able to forget that he had been guilty of this unscientific attitude, for science is founded on certitude, not assumption.
The most basic task of any museum must be the protection of works of cultural significance entrusted to its care for the edification and pleasure of future generations. This imperative rightfully takes precedence over acquisition, interpretation, outreach, or any number of other activities now believed to be crucial to the survival of our great art repositories. Sometimes a museum gains its holdings with much strategic forethought, and at other times serendipitously, as when a long-coveted neighbor’s plot suddenly becomes available. Yet the moral responsibility remains the same.
I have an image of Shanghai, which is quite different from other directors, I think. The story of Shanghai should happen in back alleys.
The Theatre of the Absurd ... can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time. ? The hallmark of this attitude is its sense that the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, that they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions.
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