YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND

Occasionally, there are exhibitions where simply attending can feel life-changing. They are not necessarily the ones that receive the most publicity, but they somehow stay with you—for weeks, months, even years after seeing them. That has certainly been the case for me with YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, recently on display at London’s Tate Modern. It was an enormous retrospective of a towering artist who finally seems to be emerging from the long shadow of her famous husband, John Lennon. This exhibition makes it clear that Yoko Ono should now be recognized as one of the greatest contemporary artists—someone who has profoundly influenced a generation.

Hung in chronological order, the exhibition begins at the very start of Yoko Ono’s career, with photographs from the period when she lived in New York and was deeply involved in the city’s avant-garde movement. This section highlights some of her famous “instruction pieces”—works in which viewers are encouraged to become co-creators. The written instructions invite readers to imagine, experience, or complete the work themselves. Some exist as a single verb, such as “fly” or “touch.” Others take the form of short phrases like “Listen to a heartbeat” or “Step in all the puddles in the city,” and some are more abstract prompts for the imagination, such as Painting to be Constructed in Your Head.

These instruction pieces were created in Ono’s New York loft and include works like Big Bag, in which participants were invited to inhabit a large canvas bag. One of the most famous pieces from this period is Cut Piece, a conceptual work where members of the audience were invited to cut away pieces of Ono’s clothing as she sat silently. A video of an early performance of Cut Piece is particularly illuminating: we see mostly men cutting large swathes of fabric from her clothing, eventually leaving her clutching the few scraps that remain. She appears visibly shaken. The piece seems to highlight the violence that may lie latent within us all. It suggests that once social guardrails are removed and people are given permission to act without constraint, they may behave in disturbing and revealing ways.

^{Yoko Ono, Cut Piece 1964 Performed by Yoko Ono in “New Works by Yoko Ono”, Carnegie Recital Hall, NYC , March 21 1965. Photo by Minoru.}

This was one of Ono’s most experimental periods. In her New York loft studio, she collaborated with composer La Monte Young to host concerts and events, fostering a vibrant creative atmosphere. It was also during this time, in 1961, that she held her first solo exhibition at AG Gallery. Around the same period, she self-published her groundbreaking anthology Grapefruit, a collection of her instruction pieces written between 1953 and 1964. This influential work is now being displayed in the UK for the first time.

Another notable instruction piece from this era is Shadow Piece (1963), in which viewers are invited to sketch their own shadow. The resulting works are simple—and simply beautiful.

One of the key themes highlighted throughout the exhibition is the deeply participatory nature of Yoko Ono’s art. Some visitors have remarked on how much it reminds them of the work of contemporary performance art superstar Marina Abramović—with a few even suggesting that Ono may have drawn inspiration from Abramović. What such comments often overlook, however, is that Ono was there first. In fact, much of Abramović’s work can be seen as referencing or building upon the pioneering groundwork laid by Yoko Ono.

As you move through the exhibition, it becomes clear that as Ono’s artistic reputation grew, so too did her activism. With John Lennon now her husband, many of their iconic collaborations—set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War—were created to promote the cause of peace. Perhaps most famously, Imagine became a global anthem. Although Lennon was originally credited as the sole author, that changed in 2017 to include Ono. In an interview with NPR prior to his death, Lennon openly acknowledged her contribution: “Actually, that should be credited as a Lennon-Ono song because a lot of the lyric and the concept came from Yoko. But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution.”