Yoko Ono and the observed observer

Lion,

The main component of his production are ideas, whether poetic, absurd and utopian, specific and achievable or impossible to materialize.

A little more than a decade after the Guggenheim in Bilbao gave Yoko Ono a retrospective that highlighted the conjunction in her works of humor and criticism, and the importance of her instructions – oral or written – when granting the viewer an active role, the MUSAC, and the city of León as a whole, pay tribute to the Japanese artist in the exhibition “Insound and instructure”.

Its title comes from a concert and an exhibition that this author, born in Tokyo in 1933 and trained in philosophy, poetry and musical composition, offered at the Yamaichi hall in the Japanese capital in 1964: these terms allude to the relevance in her practices of both sound and the aforementioned instructions, the latter presented as textual pieces that propose to those who read them to imagine, experience, carry out or complete Ono’s work.

Shortly before that Tokyo project, the artist had converted her loft on Chambers Street in New York into an experimental art center where she curated, together with Le Monte Young, innovative performances that would contribute to laying the foundations of the Fluxus movement. Its fruits, according to its leader George Maciunas, had to be simple, entertaining and unpretentious and deal with trivial topics, without the need to master special techniques, nor involve innumerable trials nor aspire to have commercial or institutional value.

More than a current, Fluxus was a singular phenomenon: because of its international character and because its artists offered concerts, in a succession of simple acoustic and visual actions called acts either activitieswhich were performed, with or without the author, before the public. An audience, equally, participating or not. Sometimes they used unusual instruments, such as games Flux-kits: suitcases with stamps, banners or books made by the creators themselves.

In that context, and in the same year 1964, Ono published GRAPEFRUITa seminal compilation of more than two hundred instructions that invited viewers to perform his pieces themselves. Some of the creations now presented at MUSAC, and representative of his seven decades of career, have their origins in GRAPEFRUIT; others, however, correspond to the later decades, when she accentuated her activist side and began to address topics such as feminism, peace and the environment from a desire for experimentation and research.

Yoko Ono. Insound and Instructure. MUSAC, 2025

It proposes “Insound and instructure”, curated by Álvaro Rodríguez Fominaya, Jon Hendricks and Connor Monahan and co-produced by the Sakip Sabanci Müzesi of Istanbul, a non-chronological dialogue between Ono’s ideas, actions and formats and an exploration of its current validity, both in the artistic and social fields.

The filming of his performance is not missing from the tour Cut Piece, at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1965 (she has performed it on half a dozen occasions, at least a couple of them really uncomfortable): she goes on stage with scissors in hand and invites the audience to cut her dress. Although a priori it could be interpreted as a metaphor for female vulnerability to the gaze of others, it can be developed by both men and women and refers to what is taken from the artist and given to the artist: Instead of giving the audience what the artist decides to give, the artist gives what the audience decides to take. That is, you take and cut whatever you want: that was the purpose for me.

We will also contemplate one of his first closed-circuit video installations, which brings the changing and dynamic sky of León to the interior of the museum, linking the center with the exterior; or his first foray into the cinematographic medium: the film FLYwhich he directed with John Lennon in the early seventies. When she began to be interested in women’s rights, the body, and the search for personal freedom, she had a camera travel over the body of a performer, following the movements of several flies. These displacements are evoked by the sound of the filming.

The first version of his book also dates back to 1971. Maze-Amazing: in the MUSAC, a plexiglass labyrinth has been arranged on the floor that the viewer can access; At its center, a laminated one-way mirror element blocks vision from the outside on three and a half of its four sides. In the remaining medium, the visitor goes from being an observer to being observed. On previous occasions, a portrait or a telephone has been placed in that central cubicle to speak directly with the artist.

Drawings have also arrived in León: those that make up his series Summer in Franklin (1994-2006). He wanted to make them from improvisation and automatism, and it was a challenge: On my farm, surrounded by trees and wildflowers and listening to the frogs in the pond, I began to draw with dots using the automatic writing method. However, in automatic writing the very nature of the words and their logical connections prevented me from being automatic in many cases. With the points it was easier for me.

The points accumulated, generating masses, and figures emerged from them. It was as if a part of my brain that had been closed all this time suddenly opened and torrents of images poured out. I tried not to interfere in the process, but the logical mind often came into play to control the direction of the points.

The installation also dates back to the nineties morning rays and the photographic series Vertical memory. The first refers to the light that can emanate from inanimate objects; The second is made up of superimposed portraits of her father, her husband and her son, as a metaphorical review of her own existence: Each photo shows a man who cared about me at a specific time in my life when I was going through an important situation.

And among his most recent proposals at MUSAC, the installation stands out Doors (2011): in it they cease to be thresholds to mark the rhythm of the public’s wandering; They lack walls and could symbolize the challenges we face. Those routes that we can take and those that are preferable to avoid.