Participatory Art

Summary

When does something — an object, an act, a situation— become “art”? It’s a question that’s really dependent on the artist — and even more so, the participant or viewer.

Background

Conceptual artists, pulling tangentially from Dada and Pop artists, prized ideas over formal element and visual components … for the most part. Mid-century Conceptualism took on various forms, including sculpture, but also performance through Fluxus. Yoko Ono was a prolific member of Fluxus: a style which embraced flux, or change, as an essential element of life, and through this, incorporated mundane and everyday objects, activities, and situations to integrate art with life. Similarly, she embraced the conceptual nature of blurring the line between artist and participant, utilizing instruction and chance in the majority of her works.

Ono’s Mend iterations have mutated and shifted over the course of time, having first been conceived as a single broken teacup, a bottle of glue, and a spool of thread accompanied by a single-word instruction: Mend. Mending Piece I was one of several works in the artist’s 1966 solo exhibition at the Indica Gallery in London, all in which relied on instruction and visitor interaction. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ono began creating kits that were distributed to various galleries, with the instruction, “Take your favorite cup. Break it in many pieces with a hammer. Repair it with glue and this poem.” Here, the participant needed to actively gather the materials themselves – something that differed from Mending Piece I.

Image Credit: Yoko Ono; Mend Piece (Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City version), 1966/2015; Ceramic, nontoxic glue, cello tape, scissors, and twine; Dimensions variable. Installation view: Rennie Collection, Vancouver, 2018.It was not until 2015 through the Andrea Rosen Gallery, NYC that Mend Piece took on a much more communal form, comprised of a large white table, white chairs, broken white porcelain, and multiple pairs of white scissors, glue, and twine, surrounded by two large white shelving units. On the wall of the gallery, in a simple white frame are the words: “Mend with wisdom, mend with love. It will heal the earth, at the same time.” What was perhaps lacking in the previous iterations through its singularity was a sense of real-time community. It is here, in this moment, that visitors are all engaging with – and perhaps questioning – the work, sharing verbal and energetic communication. Regardless of which iteration visitors are experiencing, each of the Mend pieces rely on us to take in and interpret its instructions in our own, unique ways.
I’m personally very protective over Yoko Ono, and I’m protective over the beauty that is being able to see “objects” become “art” — despite both being a hit-or-miss with many people. Ono’s works often combine poetic yet simple and vague instruction, and equally simple, white, almost nondescript objects, to point us all in one direction — the notion that life itself (and our places in it) is art.

 

Rem Ribeiro
Curatorial Assistant
Neuberger Museum of Art



YOKO ONO’S Mend Piece (Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City version), 1966/2015, was on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art from August 31-December 23, 2022. More

Date

September 4, 2024