I decided to pose naked and post my photo on the Internet to support Ai Weiwei. I don’t see how this gesture could be judged ‘obscene’. It’s just a way of expressing my individual freedom.

I first heard about this campaign on [Chinese social networking site] Weibo. A lot of photographs were circulating online at the beginning, but they were quickly removed. The aim of the campaign is to show that nudity is not synonymous with pornography. This campaign’s use of photos is a very artistic approach to this issue.

Ai Weiwei is not guilty of anything. The actions that the authorities have taken against him are an act of political persecution.

Ai is a great man and has shown a great deal of courage. He has never abandoned his struggle in fear of being rejected or persecuted. When there was an earthquake in Sichuan in 2008 and thousands of students were buried in the rubble of their schools, it was Ai who fought to publish a list of the names of the victims. [After the earthquake, the artist launched his blog ‘The Sichuan Names Project’, whilst the authorities refused to release any statistics regarding the names of the victims]. He also supported the activist Tan Zuoren, who demanded an independent inquiry into the reasons for the earthquake’s very high death toll. [The activist blamed the poor quality of some of the buildings. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison for ‘inciting subversion’].

Last year, Ai Weiwei’s main artistic project was a giant bed of 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds [exhibited at the Tate Modern Gallery in London]. After this exhibition, he announced on Twitter that he wished to give these seeds away to people as gifts. I sent him an email and a little while later I received two porcelain grains in the post. So when he was accused of fraud by the tax authorities I sent him a small amount of money as a sign of solidarity.”