Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind
2025: My Favorite Exhibitions
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind:
Many know Yoko Ono from her marriage to John Lennon, but before their marriage, Ono was a known artist in the New York art scene. In November, I saw six decades of Ono’s brilliance and imagination in her exhibition, Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, at the MCA in Chicago. From her documented performances, photographs, sculptures, albums, and Instruction Paintings, it was made clear that Ono is a once-in-a-lifetime artist. Her work borders on the line of experimental and absurd, heartfelt and unserious, imaginative and realistic.
From one room to the next, there was an invitation to add or take something from Ono’s art. You can hammer a nail into Painting to Hammer a Nail. In Helmets (Pieces of the Sky), you can take home a puzzle piece of the sky from a floating WWII army helmet. In the room with a boat and white walls, you can fill the walls with blue markers, where the collective words and drawings begin to look like the sea. In Mend Piece, you have the chance to take broken ceramic pieces, tape, scissors, and twine, and create your own sculptures, and then add them to one of two hanging shelves. You can shake a stranger’s hand through Ono’s Painting to Shake Hands (painting for cowards). In Bag Piece, you can step into a Black bag where you can see out, but no one can see in, and move around, creating a one-of-one performance with friends or strangers. And in my favorite room, you can attach a written wish to a tree or tape a letter to your mother on a wall.
It was an exhibition that required the audience to participate, to take part, to become one with each other and the artwork.
I left sobbing after reading people’s wishes on Wishing Tree, or the letters written for My Mommy is Beautiful. I could feel the love vibrating off the walls, off the words, from the space. I loved witnessing how an invitation to create and imagine united strangers in a place that is usually used to look at things. It showed me how many people are willing and want to make art; all they need is an invitation to do so.
What stood out the most to me is Ono’s throughline of advocating peace in her practice. During WWII, as a child, Ono lived through the bombings in Japan, and later in life, she violently lost her husband, John. It amazed me how this woman has continuously chosen peace after experiencing such horrors. Like Jack Whitten, instead of choosing violence, she chose her art. And in that, she has painted a world of peace and used her work to unite us and help us imagine another world and another way of being…together.
I have never moved through an exhibition like this before, and I think as artists we can learn a thing or two from Ono. Art is more impactful if we ask those around us to participate in it. I have been deeply moved and inspired.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind comes in at #2 on my list of favorite shows of 2025.
Music of the Mind is up until February 22, 2026, at the MCA in Chicago. Its next and final stop is the Broad Museum in Los Angeles from May 23rd until October 11th. I highly recommend making a trip to see it. This is a show you’ll remember forever.
In case you missed it, see my #1 choice for my 2025 Favorite Exhibitions here.
A Few of My Favorite Works:
I love PAINTING TO SHAKE HANDS (painting for cowards). I thought it was hilarious. Since I didn’t have anyone’s hand to shake, I decided to shake the air, which made it funnier. This piece is so ridiculous, but brilliant. It was cool to do something I would have never thought to do with a stretched canvas (a material I work with often). I admire how Ono transforms everyday objects into works of art. So simple, yet…so simple!
“A HOLE” is a framed piece of glass with a bullet hole pierced through by a gunshot. Seeing this, I immediately thought about John Lennon. Even with that thought, I couldn’t help but think how beautiful this piece was. At the bottom of the glass, there are instructions that say, “A HOLE GO TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GLASS AND SEE THROUGH THE HOLE.”
I wanted to write my own interpretation, but the description is so beautifully written on Ono’s website, I thought I’d share.
“For Ono, a hole is an entrance to the way to un-rock one’s mind. This time, the plate of glass was intentionally shot to make the hole. The hole was made with gun – the symbol of battle and violence. Pain remains fresh with the bullet hole.
However, even the hole holding the trace of cruelty can be an air hole leading to hopes and dreams if you change your viewpoint or convert your mindset. In order to remind you of the mind-set conversion, Ono instructs you to go to the other side of the bullet hole and look. It is an action to switch sides from the one who shot to the one who was shot.”
I almost didn’t participate in Mend Piece, but as I began walking away, a chair opened up. So I sat there for about 20 minutes assembling the broken ceramics. With limited tools and broken ceramic pieces, it took patience to come up with something to make and leave behind. It reminded me of the work I make with eggshells. It starts as one thing and, through breaking apart, it becomes something new. I loved seeing what people were able to make!
Wish Tree can be found all over the world. I have seen a few in random parks and in a few sculpture gardens, and every time, I am struck by how this living organism is charged with mankind's wishes and intentions. I wonder what that does for the tree.
Check out her website to learn more and to make your own wish.
This was surprisingly a lot harder than I thought. I absolutely love this as a “painting” and would want this in my home and have friends and family add to it. It was also fun to make this much noise in a museum. :p
I was hesitant to add something to these walls. It seemed like there was no room, and I questioned, What profound thing did I have to say? After a few minutes of reading, I found a spot and wrote “YOU ARE FRAGILE. And so is everyone else.” This piece taught me that there is always room to add something. Like a drop in an ocean, it matters.
I spent the most time by My Mommy is Beautiful. As I cried for my mother Eileen, I also found myself crying for all the mothers on this wall. This piece left me speechless. I think the people’s letters speak for themselves. In the last photo, you will see a poem I wrote to my mother and added to the wall.
What to Watch:
Watch PBS’s The Art Assignment short video about Ono’s work here (highly recommend!)
What To Read:
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is the exhibition’s catalogue, and Grapefruit is a small book of instructions and drawings for you to make like Ono. If you can’t see the show, I would get both books!
Yoko Ono February 18, 1933 - still alive! Big praise to the spirit and life of Yoko!