Indian audiences got a taste of an avant-garde artist as Vadehra Art Gallery featured, for the first time in India, the work of the legendary Yoko Ono.
Titled ‘Our Beautiful Daughters’, the exhibition is a multi media installation specially created for India by the avant grade art Ono, to engage the audience and shed light on some of the challenges women face today. In a message to the Indian audience, Ono said, “Our beautiful daughters of the planet: each one of us is a being sent to earth to bring peace and happiness for all. Let’s have a clear vision about this. And know that this is the time to heal the world with women power. We can do it, and we will.”
The art installation also includes a parallel exhibition titled, ‘The Seeds’, which showcases some of Yoko Ono’s earlier work – films, collaborations with other artists, instructions, photographs – along with historical documentation of performances and installations to present a composite picture of her longstanding artistic career and commitment to peace.
Apart from this latest installation, the exhibition in Delhi recalls some of her legendary instruction-based works. ‘My Mommy is Beautiful’, extends an invitation to viewers to cover empty canvases and walls with messages and photographs of their mother as a monumental dedication to motherhood and love.
Finally there is a series of public art projects, spread across over 20 venues in Delhi, co-organized by Vadehra Art Gallery and The Japan Foundation, with additional support from Outset India.
The projects include Wish Trees, which Yoko Ono first made in 1996 inspired by her childhood experience of visiting a temple in Japan where she would write a wish on a piece of paper and attach it to a tree branch. Yoko Ono has travelled the globe asking individuals to write their own hopes and prayers on paper tags. The wishes – currently totalling over a million will be sent to the Imagine Peace Tower, a memorial Yoko Ono created for John Lennon in 2007, on the Isle of Videy in Iceland. The other works include a set of ‘instructions’ as well as large scale banners that carry Yoko Ono’s specially chosen messages for India.
Yoko Ono also gave one of her legendary performances, To India With Love, to Delhi audiences, on January 15, 2012 at India Habitat Centre.
Exhibition dates
13 January – 10 March, 2012
Exhibition venues:
OUR BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS
Vadehra Art Gallery
D-178 Okhla Phase 1, New Delhi 110020
T: 011 65474005 / 65474006
THE SEEDS
Vadehra Art Gallery
D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024
T: 011 4610 3550 / 46103551
E: art@vadehraart.com
W: www.vadehraart.com