Yoko Ono Awarded Golden Lion
Venice Biennale Lifetime Achievement Award for Japanese Artist
Jun 4, 2009
Yoko Ono, along with California conceptual artist John Baldessari, is one of two artists singled out for their enduring influence in the avant-garde of contemporary art at this year’s Biennale, the 53rd International Art Exhibition in Venice.
Biennale director Daniel Birnbaum emphasised the international scope of the exhibition in the selection of both Ono and Baldessari for the prestigious prize. “The Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement are celebrating two artists whose avant-garde work has opened new possibilities of poetic, conceptual and social expression for artists around the world, who work through all types of language,” said Birnbaum.
Yoko Ono has been a pioneer in conceptual, interactive and performance art since her involvement in the New York avant-garde scene of the late 1950s and early ‘60s. One of her early works with the most enduring legacy is Cut Piece (1964), a performance piece of striking boldness which has reached iconic stature in feminist art.
Venice Biennale Exhibition Anton’s Memory
Ono is also participating in the 2009 Biennale. Her exhibition Anton’s Memory will be shown at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa through September 20, 2009. Anton’s Memory (2009) is an ambitious collection of multi-media installations representing the being of a woman interpreted through the memories of her son. The exhibition incorporates film, sculpture, drawing and audio compositions, as well as interactive elements, such as the piece My Mommy Was Beautiful, which invites viewers to share thoughts and memories on cards to be mounted on surrounding wallboards.
Anton’s Memory revisits themes important to Ono’s work, particularly those of identity, perception, the passage of time, corporeal versus spiritual and private versus collective experience. “I wanted to show that there’s a little difference between what she went through and what was observed by her son,” Ono told Financial Times reporter Rachel Spence ("Shapes of a Woman," FT Weekend May 30, 2009).
Yoko Ono Wish Trees
This is Ono’s second Venice Biennale exhibition. Ono showed her installation Wish Tree at the 50th edition of the Biennale in 2003. The interactive piece, which marries Japanese tradition of artistic meaning in nature with Ono’s trademark striving for harmony and world peace, invites viewers to share their cherished hopes and wishes. Yoko Ono’s Wish Trees have been recreated in venues as diverse as Pasadena and Shanghai, and Wish Tree, 2003 is included as a permanent work in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
The 2003 Venice Biennale exhibition could be seen as a watershed moment in Ono’s career, since which time she has increasingly emerged from the shadow of her hyper-public persona as John Lennon’s widow to become recognised as an important artist of the contemporary avant-garde. Ono’s 2009 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement further cements the reputation of an artist whose vision has consistently challenged boundaries both socio-political and artistic.
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