Status Updates From Ai Weiwei (Phaidon Contempo...

Ai's premise that 'artists are not in a position to decide the conditions imposed upon them but they can make statements about those conditions.' Typically in China, in order for such sentiments to resonate, the authorities had to feel goaded into closing the exhibition down. One might suggest then . . . Ai needed to be shut down in order to reinforce the urgency of challenging and changing the Chinese system."

"Totalitarian society was all about curtailing the discussion, ending the debate. With no idea what was in other people's minds, eventually people lost sight of what was in their own minds. This meant they could have no idea of the reality in which they or other people were living."

"Within every art scene in every era, it takes time for the critical dust to settle in the wake of a nonconformist, and for history to decide what future generations will think. Ai is clearly, in the words of the late British art historian and critic David Sylvester, 'radical enough in style to be relevant to the future.'l

"This sense of insecurity, which might be described as the desire to be different in a country that demanded conformity in the name of equality, and the overarching complexity of the Chinese individual's relationship with society, the authorities and tradition was not lost on Ai."