I never felt like a Chinese citizen because I was pushed away at a very young age. My father, a writer, was a national enemy of the Communist Party. He was forbidden to write for 20 years. We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet. Nationality and borders are barriers to our intelligence, to our imagination and to all kinds of possibilities.
Ai WeiweiIt 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 WeiweiIt became like a symbolic thing, to be โan artist.โ After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
Ai WeiweiI'm not nostalgic about the old city. I don't enjoy it that much. It was just a city with one emperor and the rest of them just rats or meaningless people.
Ai WeiweiWhen I first got into the first-year study after the Cultural Revolution, got into the same school with this group, I wasn't conscious of the so-called "Fifth Generation." I didn't like that kind of study condition because there's no real, true education there.
Ai Weiwei