Yoko Ono. Dream Come True

Dream Come True, the first retrospective of work by Yoko Ono (Tokyo, 1933) ever held in Argentina.

Ono is an essential and pioneering figure in con-ceptual and participatory contemporary art. The exhibition consists of over eighty works, including objects, videos, films, installations, and sound recordings produced from the early sixties to the present. The corner-stone of the exhibition are the Instruction Pieces, in which Ono has been working on for over sixty years. Thetitle of the exhibition can be read as a metaphor for Ono’s artistic career, but also as a commentary on the cur-rent global situation which, in Ono’s view, can be improved by group participation and creative exchange.

Ono is associated with conceptual andperformance art, as well as the neo-avant-garde Fluxus movement and the happenings of the sixties. She was one of the first to question the concept ofwork of art and the artwork as object, breaking traditional boundaries between artistic disciplines. By inviting viewers to play an active role in the production of the work, she has created a new modality in the relationship between artist and viewer.

Ono uses a clear and universal language to produce objects, events, rituals, and actions that culminate in theprecise terms she formulates with audience participation. The “Instruction Pieces” consist of simple and poetic messages that invite viewers to execute specific actions such as “listen to the sound of the earth turning” or “light a match and watch till it goes out.”

The exhibition project encompasses two instances: the proper exhibition in MALBA’s galleries and the exhibi-tion and communication of a great many works in the public space, the mass media, the Internet, and social networks. Instructions can be read, then, not only on the walls of MALBA’s galleries, but also on the pages of a newspaper, as part of a “dance festival,” on a billboard in the middle of a major avenue, at a bus stop or sub-way station; or they are heard on loudspeakers or the radio, whispered in one’s ear; or they might be received in an e-mail or as an image that goes viral on social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram.

Through these means, Yoko Ono expands the breadth of body of work with a strong political and social com-mitment, specifically to the feminist, pacifist, and environmentalist movements. In Dream Come True, Ono in-vites us to embark on an experience that will transform our relationship to ourselves and to others.

“It is important to note,” explains Agustín Pérez Rubio, “that if Yoko’s instructions look to the world it is be-cause they also—and in equal measure—carry the world in them and condense it. They are not self-contained creations that claim simply to be communicated, but rather an attempt to restore in those that hear them, awareness of this place, of this world we are in with all the problems, aspirations, desires, frustrations, andsocial and political concerns that affect them. That is why Yoko Ono’s work in its entirety, from its beginnings through the present, can be read as a theoretical corpus with a political agenda.”