Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer and peace activist also known for her avant-garde art, music and filmmaking. Ono was married to John Lennon until he died in 1980. She was born in 1933 and is now 82 years old. Ono brings feminism into a lot of her work by focusing on the way society perceives them and tends to challenge the way her spectators think and often does performances with audience interaction.

“This society is driven by neurotic speed and force accelerated by greed, and frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and woman we have created for ourselves; the image has nothing to do with the reality of people.” – Yoko Ono

Washington Post interview with Ono: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042000410.html

Cut Piece by Yoko Ono: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYJ3dPwa2tI

“We’re here on this earth to unravel the mystery of this planet. The planet is asking for it.” – Yoko Ono

I like the idea of Ono’s film where she asks audience members to one by one join her on stage and cut off a part of her clothing. Eventually she is sitting basically naked. To me this represents the way society picks at women and ends up leaving them with nothing. I find this a really great concept and brings in audience participation as well as bringing to light serious issues such as the way women are treated within our society. I think that this piece is very strong and really does speak volumes. I love that Ono got the audience involved really making it an event to remember. Ono has some really great work which would be interesting to respond to as means of public participation and performance photography. One thing in particular that I enjoy about the film ‘Cut Piece’ is that Ono just has a neutral facial expression, she isn’t sharing her inner emotions with any participants or with the audience. I like that as this allows the audience and spectators to make up their own mind of what is going on and their own personal opinions and views on what is going on. This project shows the vulnerability of women with the audience cutting up her clothing piece by piece. She is motionless throughout possibly showing passiveness and how women are expected to be that way and just allow others to use them and take things away from them, more mentally than physically. This is a really strong body of work and shows true vulnerability in a completely great and artistic way which is something that I really like about Ono.

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream, A dream you dream together is reality.” – Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono and John Lennon blog: http://imaginepeace.com

Recently I have seen quite a few videos of women going into the streets wearing nothing but underwear and a sign, holding a pen in each hand. The signs invite the public to draw a heart anywhere on her body showing that all shapes and sizes of women are beautiful no matter what society tries to imply is right. I think that these videos are very moving and really does show how accepting we can be as a society and that we just need that little push with movements such as feminism and artistic movements in order to gain support and understanding of current social issues of the way men and women are expected to be. This reminds me of Ono’s work as she completely relies on public participation and cooperation within a lot of her work. I really love these kinds of videos as they make me happy and feel less self-conscious of my body knowing that people will accept you no matter what you look like. Through public acts like these we as a society realise that focusing on the way someone looks physically is wrong and can really damage a person mentally. It’s things like these that make me happy to be a part of this generation as we have come so far, with so far to go, and are constantly finding more creative ways to show people that everyone should be accepted and self love is not something to be ashamed of.

More recent work of Yoko Ono. This is mainly to do with music but has a creative meaning and concept behind it which is actually very interesting to watch. Some of the stuff that Ono has created seems very strange and random but then she turns it almost comical and funny, I really like that about her she doesn’t take herself too seriously but does come up with good meanings behind her work with good concepts.

Article on Yoko Ono ‘Cut Piece’:  http://www.reactfeminism.org/entry.php?id=121&e=