By Manjari Kaul
About the artist:
The Japanese avant garde artist, Yoko Ono is known to be a symbol of peace activities. Through her prolific career she has explored the mediums of performance art, film, music and poetry. In 2009 she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. In July 2011, she was honoured with the prestigious 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her dedicated peace activism.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933 and moved to New York in 1953. By the late 50s she had become part of the city vibrant avant garde activities. Among her landmark works is Cut Piece, performed in Kyoto and Tokyo in 1964, in which she invited the audience to cut pieces of her clothing till it was reduced to shreds. In 1969, together with John Lennon she realized Bed-In and the worldwide War is Over (if you want it) campaign for peace.
The artist about her trip to India:
At a press conference in Delhi she said that she wishes to be inspired by “the great land” that India is. She sees art as a conveyor of the message of peace that she wants to give out to the world.
She believes that we're headed towards doomsday unless we harness the nurturing instinct of women. The regenerative quality of humans must be preserved if we wish to prevent our race from being wiped out. Yoko Ono lamented the fact that the art world continues to be male dominated in the West and was happy to meet several women from the Indian art world. She thinks that the peace project and movement to empower women go hand in hand.
About her performance art work titled To India With Love, slated to be performed on the 15th of January, she said that the audience will create the art work with her by their active participation or may be with mere silence. “That one hour of the performance will never happen again even if I perform the piece again for the very same audience again because the lives of the audience members would have changed. They wouldn't be the same people. That's how our lives are. Fleeting,” said the artist.
The Public Art Projects on Display in India:
Her first ever exhibition being held in India is titled Our Beautiful Daughters. The public art projects being co organized by Vadhera Art Gallery and The Japan Foundation are spread across schools, hospitals, museums and book stores. Her work titled Wish Tree was inspired by her childhood experience of visiting a temple in Japan where she would write a wish on a piece of paper and attach it to a tree branch. These wishes will be collected and finally sent to Iceland that hosts the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
Using advertising as a medium, on Vinyl banners John Lennon (who was married to Yoko Ono then) launched the iconic anti war campaign WAR IS OVER (if you want it) across the world. For India, Yoko Ono has chosen the messages SMILE, TOUCH, DREAM and OUR BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS to be placed in the public domain. Further, postcards containing poems from her book Grapefruit (1964) are placed in book stores and coffee shops to invite public participation in her work.
Yoko Ono's artwork can be viewed at the following venues:
Our Beautiful Daughters
@ D-178 Okhla Phase 1, New Delhi*
The Seeds
@ D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi*
Performance: To India With Love
15th January, 2012 | 7.30
Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
*13th January to 10th March, 2012
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