Gallery 8: Imagine Peace

An avid chess player, Ono has made numerous objects based on a 1966 concept for an all-white chess set. Her simple alteration— painting the board and pieces a uniform white—derails any ordinary play of the game according to traditional rules. Instead, the players lose track of their pieces as the game progresses; ideally this leads to a shared understanding of their mutual concerns and a new relationship based on empathy rather than opposition. Peace is then attained on a small scale; perhaps the rules will even be revised so that the game can continue. While Play it by Trust, like White Chess Set, is of course closely related to Ono’s consistent and varied activities toward the attainment of world peace, its one-on-one scenario is consistent with her wish that her work encourage each of us first to “deal with oneself.” White Chess Set, which was at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Tittenhurst Park residence, appeared in the film Imagine: In the movie, the famous couple argue over a game played out on this chess set. The first version of this piece was made for Ono’s 1966 Indica Gallery exhibition and titled simply Chess Set. It consisted of a table whose surface was a chessboard made of alternating raised squares, a set of chess pieces, and two chairs, everything painted white. An accompanying sign attached to the table instructed viewers to play. Ono’s interest in chess is contextually linked to that of Fluxus mentor Marcel Duchamp, who in the 1920s announced his withdrawal from art-making to pursue his passion for chess.

Yoko Ono’s poetic installation Wish Tree is an extension of the exhibition, providing a quiet moment for peace and meditation. Wish Tree is the generic title of a series of works produced by Ono beginning in the 1990s that uses real trees as the components and linchpins of this conceptual project. For Ono, a work of art must create a desire and an investment on the part of the viewer: “All my works are a form of wishing. Keep wishing while you participate.” She has often recounted how, as a child in Japan, she wrote her wishes on little pieces of paper that she would then hang on the branches of trees in temple courtyards. Wish Tree is also a reminder of Lennon and Ono’s earlier performances from 1968 on as “peace gardeners” in the Acorn Events, symbolic gestures that involved sending acorns to heads of state and religious authorities around the world with an invitation to plant them as a sign of peace. The work encourages the public to meditate on the meaning of life and the importance of hope, wishes and dialogue. Small blank paper tags are made available so that visitors may become active participants; they are invited to inscribe their words on the tags and attach them to the branches of a Wish Tree. Finally, the Resource Centre offers a selection of books written by a number of authors committed to peace, alongside images of the Imagine Peace Tower, a beam of light and hope illuminating the Iceland sky, created by Yoko Ono in 2007.