Ai Weiwei on Art

"We have to give our opinion, we have to say something, or we are a part of it. As an artist I am forced to say something."

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

"I don’t see myself as a dissident artist. I see them as a dissident government!"

"We see plenty of artistic work that reflects superficial social conditions, but very little work that questions fundamental values."

"Contemporary art and the Party are an impossible situation. It’s like oil and water—they can never mix."

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

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

"Three years after the CCTV headquarters fire , human skeletons lie forgotten. Is anyone accountable?"

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

"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."

"I always want to design a frame that’s open to everyone. I don’t see art as a secret code."

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

"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."

"I’m not sure I’m good at art, but I find an escape in it."

"Everything is art. Everything is politics."

"Art is not an end but a beginning."

"People often say I started to become too outspoken after a certain period. It’s all because of the Internet. If we didn’t have this technology I would be same as everybody else. I couldn’t really amplify my voice."

"People have said, if you leave, you may never come back. Or they may not even let you leave. So this is always a cost you may have to pay. But I don’t want to restrict myself: When it happens, it happens. I have to deal with it, but not to prepare for it, because it is a kind of stupidity. If you prepare for it too much, you become a part of it."

"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."

"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."