World-renowned singer-artist debuts in India

A dazzling and diminutive diva, now just 78-year-old, Yoko Ono has moved on from music to fine arts. She is in India for her new exhibition series, entitled ‘Our Beautiful Daughters’. This is only her second visit to the country, the first one incidentally in the late 1960s, after marrying to John Lennon.

According to Ono, her experiments in the early 1960s with the avant-garde in NY were influenced by John Cage, La Monte Young and other musicians, apart from artist George Maciunas. Her early art practice involved installations like ‘the Eternal Time clock’, a piece with just a seconds hand put in a plastic bubble.

The central piece of her new show at New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, entitled ‘Remember Us’, is a large-scale installation with wooden coffins that bear disembodied girls & women. It has been made in collaboration with a Bikaner (Rajasthan)-based women’s crafts group. It apparently addresses the peculiar gender issues in India. She has been engaged with the socially sensitive subject for quite some time. The work is a sort of a tribute to common Indian women, who hold their own in spite of suffering and discrimination.

Ono is happy and pleasantly surprised by the fact that she has come across many intelligent and influential young women. Her instruction-based works, six of them, depend solely on the viewer participation. For instance, ‘My Mommy Is Beautiful’ invites them to write what they felt about their mothers. ‘Soprano’ asks them to yell ‘against the wind, against the wall, and against the sky’ into a microphone.

A parallel display, called ‘The Seeds’, documents her earlier works to give a contextual framework. Simultaneously, public art projects spread across 20 venues in Delhi, accompany the show, her well-travelled ‘Wish Trees’. Having branched out from the wishes strung in most Japanese temples, the ‘Wish Trees’ have made to different countries of the world since the 1990s. Her performance ‘To India, with Love’ was another highlight of her show and a memorable visit to India.