Art
Yoko Ono gets a big exhibition in London
Yoko Ono’s art is created in interaction with the audience. photo
© Jens Kalaene/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
Long before her relationship with John Lennon, Yoko Ono worked as a performance artist. The Tate Modern is now dedicating an exhibition to her, which is also coming to Germany.
“Light a match and watch how it turns out.” The performance artist Yoko Ono (90) was successful long before her relationship with musician John Lennon from the Beatles. With little descriptions like these, she encourages observers to try out their ideas for themselves.
An exhibition at the Tate Modern in London is now dedicated from February 15th. at their work. According to the museum, “Yoko Ono: Music of the mind” is the largest exhibition ever for the Japanese artist in the UK.
Project is also coming to Germany
The exhibition was conceived together with the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection and will be on display in Düsseldorf from autumn. In London it includes around 200 works. These include documents, videos, images and audio recordings.
Visitors can take part in many of the works of art themselves. You can hammer nails into a picture, try out all-white chess sets, paint shadows, leave a comment about your own mother on a meter-long wall.
Yoko Ono has a unique way of bringing people together and thinking about important issues together, said Andrew de Brún from the curatorial team.
Recognize your own incompleteness
As a child, Yoko Ono saw Tokyo being bombed. According to the curator, not only the confrontation with war and peace, but also the desire for healing is an important theme in her work.
One work shows a room whose furnishings have been cut in half. “She wants people to recognize their own fragmentation,” said de Brún. “That we are all fragments that need connections, that need healing to some degree.”
Yoko Ono’s art is not finished either, but is created with the audience. An important part of her work is the reversal of the relationship between artist and viewer. For example, in the performance “Cut Piece”, when the audience cut her clothes off her body.
In bed with John Lennon for days
Yoko Ono once met Lennon in London. The lovers also worked together and lay in bed for days accompanied by reporters to demonstrate for peace. Some Beatles fans accuse Yoko Ono of breaking up the band. Paul McCartney once said that the group itself had broken up.
Even after her husband’s murder, Yoko Ono, who is considered an important representative of the Fluxus movement, continued to work as a conceptual artist and peace activist. The new exhibition creates a monument to her during her lifetime.
Information about the exhibition Planned exhibition in Germany