She was
a girl in Japan in World War II.
She had been born in 1933 to a wealthy family in Tokyo, she had lived in the US and, back in her country, she took refuge from attacks in the countryside.
But she said that she will never forget the farewell messages from the kamikaze (suicide) pilots that were broadcast on the radio:
“I'm leaving, mom.
May you have a long life.”
Her father was a prisoner.
And finally they emigrated, after the
nuclear bombs
against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He also
spent more than 20 years without his only daughter, Kyoko
.
Her second ex-husband obtained custody of her, took her away, and integrated her into a cult in which she changed his name to her.
A documentary was filmed about how she, with the help of
John Lennon,
“kidnapped” the girl for 3 days in Mallorca and they both made her a song (
Don't worry Kyoko, mom is just looking for her hand in the snow
) but
, given her celebrity, it is a little-known story.
Yoko Ono.
She was born into an upper class Japanese family.
Photo: archive
Yoko Ono
has just turned
91 years old
and, after being the witch who broke up the Beatles ("
Yes, I'm a witch,"
she said on an album, "but one of the good ones," she added) and Lennon's widow - and mother of his son Sean -, usually receives tributes for himself often.
This year she celebrates with the
largest retrospective exhibition of her life
:
London's
Tate Modern exhibits
Music of the Mind
, 200 works she created over 7 decades.
Just Married.
Yoko and John.
Photo: archive
Many say that Lennon became hooked on Yoko after seeing the play in which she suggested climbing a ladder, taking a magnifying glass, and reading
“Yes
. ”
They were times of going against and it seems that he was fascinated to find a yes.
London Tate.
A ship to paint that alludes to seas of refugees.
Photo: AP
Of course, the mega exhibition
aims to show Yoko beyond Lennon
.
It aims to highlight the avant-garde of her works and the
topicality
of her themes.
Cut Piece.
Yoko let the audience cut off her clothes.
Photo: archive
Better not to remember the
screams
with which she, inspired by childbirth, challenged the role of the quiet, submissive woman.
They are unbearable.
The Tate exhibits, for example, a small white boat for people to paint blue, in reference to the
seas of refugees
.
Also, the video of the 1964 performance in which she let the assistants cut her clothes with a scissor and showed herself, literally, as an
object woman
.
And the one about the
365 asses
of people from different countries that she filmed because “from the back, we are all the same.”
Welcome.
To the big Yoko retrospective at the Tate.
Photo: AP
What interests me about Yoko's work is on the other hand, less experimental.
She walks the bridges between
East and West
and between
self and humanity
.
It is his way of combining the tradition of
haikus
(short Japanese poems)
and the music of
John Cage
- a noise worshiper - or the no to the
Vietnam War and
Zen
philosophy
.
That is, the outside with the inside.
And the raising of
doubts, more than the answers.
Another of the pieces shown at the Tate summarizes this issue with an
accurate gesture
: it invites you to cross the frame of a painting with your hand to give it to whoever is on the other side.
Shake hands.
From 1961, recreated at the Tate.
Photo: AP
J.S.