November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Truth, No Matter the Power: Controversial Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei’s only fear is silence

(Page 4 of 4)

May-June 2009
interview by Simon Kirby, from Index on Censorship 
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I have considered what I have to lose. My close friends say, “Weiwei, you are stupid. Someday they will get you.” But I am not naive. I grew up in this system and my father was a victim of this system and this history. If we do not access our rights it only makes their power stronger.

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Chinese artists of talent, even quite young and relatively inexperienced ones, have been in constant demand for gallery and museum shows, by public and private collections, and for residencies and commissions. What effect does this demand have on the creative work that is produced?

In the West you don’t have a situation where the ideas and concepts of the entire older generation are dead. Or a situation in which nothing of value is passed on to the young. The young here think that the world starts with them. There is no other place on earth like this: Elsewhere a sense of continuity links people with previous experiences, but in China we have been totally cut off from the past for many years. And now in China we have performed that same rupture with the past yet again.

 

You mention the audience for artistic work being in the West. Can Chinese contemporary art have an impact on Chinese society?

Somehow it still does, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously. It is so far from the mainstream, but it can reach people very slowly: through young people and perhaps through fashion. We must challenge our human intelligence. We have to be positive.

 

Excerpted from Index on Censorship(Dec. 23, 2008), which covers news and issues related to freedom of expression throughout the world; www.indexoncensorship.org.

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