Yoko Ono – Labor of Love, 2020

“Life is about focusing and balancing. If you focus and lose your balance, you fall. If you balance and lose your focus, you die.”

When it comes to Yoko Ono, many musicians and die-hard Beatles fans share a common language: ‘The Japanese Witch’, ‘The woman who broke up The Beatles’, ‘The woman who became famous because of John Lennon, without any clear achievements.’ Unfortunately, despite all her work, Yoko Ono has been known only as John Lennon’s wife. Sometimes, at her exhibitions, she was booed by Beatles fans waiting outside, received countless hate letters, and her personality and art were often insulted. Yet, to this day, she has created over thirty albums, held countless exhibitions, performed numerous works of performance art, and she has been a peace activist, writer, pioneer of the Fluxus art movement, and a loving mother…

Yoko Ono owes her attitude of never leaving life to chance, and her refusal to allow destruction and annihilation, to the hardships she experienced in her childhood. Knowing that she had to work hard for success, she turned all the negative criticism directed at her into opportunities and, in her own words, gained her freedom. John and Yoko became one of the most admired and most criticized couples of the 20th century. Undoubtedly, their relationship was a fusion of pop culture and counterculture. Yoko and John were a couple who nourished each other with their art, constantly producing individually and together, complementing each other in this sense. They used to say, ‘Love will save the world.’ As John Lennon said, “I knew the moment I met her that I would have to give up everything.” To such loves…