Photo Credit: Watford/Mirrorpix, via Getty Images.
ABOUT YOKO ONO – SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Yoko Ono is an artist, musician and activist.
Born in Tokyo, 1933, Yoko Ono was the first woman admitted to the philosophy program at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, studying for a year before moving to New York, where she studied writing and music at Sarah Lawrence College. Ono became an influential conceptual and performance artist prior to her marriage and artistic partnership with John Lennon.
George Macunias, founder of the Fluxus collective, gave Ono her first solo gallery show in 1961. From the 1970s to the 2020s, Ono worked on music, both solo and in collaboration.
The Whitney Museum of American Art presented a retrospective of her work in 1989, as did the Japan Society Gallery in 2000, the Museum of Modern Art in 2015 and the Tate Modern in 2022. She has won two GRAMMY Awards, two JUNO Awards, a Primetime Emmy, a Producer’s Guild of America Award and received a Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Yoko Ono lives and works in New York.
imaginepeace.com / @yokoono
ABOUT YOKO ONO – LONG BIOGRAPHY
Yoko Ono is an artist, musician and activist.
Born in Tokyo, 1933, Ono grew up in Japan, with periods spent abroad in San Francisco and New York. She was the first woman admitted to the philosophy program at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, where she studied before moving to New York in 1953 to attend Sarah Lawrence College.
In 1956, she settled in Manhattan with her then husband, composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Immersed in a community of artists and composers, Ono began to develop her own art practice, often in the form of instructions that invited the viewer’s participation. In 1960, she rented a loft on Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan and began organizing performances and events in the space, becoming a vital part of the New York art and music scene.
In 1961, Ono’s first solo exhibition was held at George Maciunas’ AG Gallery in New York. Painting to Be Stepped On, a work of canvas placed on the floor with a card inviting the viewer to step on it, was one of several Instruction Paintings exhibited. Later that year, she gave a performance at Carnegie Recital Hall that included works involving movement, sound, and voice, such as, AOS – To David Tudor, and A Grapefruit in the World of Park.
In March 1962, Ono returned to Tokyo, where she debuted new performances at the Sogetsu Art Center, including The Pulse, and exhibited her Instructions for Paintings, a progression from works shown at AG Gallery. These works, comprised only of written instructions, marked a key moment in the history of conceptual art. Later that year, she performed with John Cage on a concert tour throughout Japan. In 1964, Ono performed Cut Piece and Bag Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo, and self-published Grapefruit, her foundational book of instructions.
In the fall of 1964, Ono returned to New York, continuing to perform and stage events, and pioneering new ways of disseminating her art through advertising and postcard events. She also began making her own films, including Film No. 4, Match and Eyeblink.
In September 1966, Ono was invited to London to perform and lecture in the Destruction in Art Symposium. Remaining in London, she had a solo exhibition at Indica Gallery and Lisson Gallery the following year, showing new conceptual object-based works such as White Chess Set, Apple, and Half-A-Room. During this period, she continued to make films, including a new version of Film No. 4 (Bottoms), and presented a series of performances on her concert tour Music of the Mind.
At her Indica Gallery exhibition, Ono met John Lennon, beginning a personal and artistic relationship in art, music, and activism. By 1968 their conceptual events to promote peace had become world-wide news, including the WAR IS OVER! If you want it campaign, and Bed-In for Peace, held in an Amsterdam hotel room during their honeymoon in 1969 and later in Montreal.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ono and Lennon’s activities centered primarily on music, film, and activism. Ono released four solo albums and four collaborative albums with Lennon over just five years, while also making multiple films, including FLY, Freedom, “RAPE”, Apotheosis, and Imagine.
In 1971 Ono had her first retrospective exhibition, This Is Not Here, at the Everson Art Museum. Later that year, her unofficial conceptual exhibition, Museum of Modern [F]art at the Museum of Modern Art was advertised in the Village Voice and documented as a new film.
In 1973, Ono and Lennon announced the birth of a new conceptual country, Nutopia, with “no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people.” In 1975 the birth of their son, Sean Taro Ono Lennon, influenced the couple’s decision to take a break from public life.
In August 1980, Ono and Lennon returned to the studio to record their first album together since 1972. Double Fantasy was released in November and went on to win the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Less than a month after its release, Lennon was shot and killed outside their home in New York.
Emerging from the tragedy of Lennon’s death, Ono immersed herself in making music, releasing several albums during the decade. “It was the music that made me survive,” Ono said. After a long absence from exhibiting her art in museums and galleries, her 1989 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yoko Ono: Objects, Film, signaled a renewed interest in her art, which continued to be exhibited extensively around the world.
In 2000 Yes Yoko Ono, a retrospective exhibition originating at the Japan Society Gallery in New York toured to thirteen international venues over four years. In 2007, Ono unveiled the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Videy, an island off the coast of Reykjavik, Iceland, giving a permanent home to her and Lennon’s long-standing commitment to world peace. In 2009, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 53rd Venice Biennale. That same year, Ono released Between My Head and the Sky, her first studio album as Plastic Ono Band since 1973. In 2018, Ono released her thirteenth solo studio album, Warzone.
Ono’s work has continued to be honored with numerous exhibitions at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York (2015) and Tate Modern in London (2024).
In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ono’s work as an artist and activist remains singularly relevant and continues to challenge the boundaries of artist and audience.
Yoko Ono lives and works in New York.
imaginepeace.com / @yokoono