An exhibition of Yoko Ono’s art from the 60s and early 70s has gone on show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971 presents over 125 objects, works on paper, installations, performances, audio recordings, and films from Ono’s early period, when she was working across New York, Tokyo and London.
The exhibition presents many interactive artworks, including a staircase titled To See the Sky, which can be climbed, Painting to Be Stepped On (self explanatory), and a room dedicated to her 1963 written piece Touch Poem for Group of People, which simple invites readers to “touch each other”. Touch Poem was a sensation in the 60s, when Ono felt that people had become distant from each other, but is perhaps even more radical today, when most contact with even our closest friends is from a distance, through impersonal electronic devices over the internet.
Ono’s seminal art performances, like Cut Piece are also presented through video recordings. This exhibition is far more concrete than Ono’s unofficial MoMA debut in late 1971. Titled Museum of Modern [F]art, the 1971 piece invited participants to chase flies that Ono has released in and around the museum as they spread across New York City.