Within the forthcoming 57th October Salon, the largest regional exhibition of contemporary art, where we’ll have the opportunity to see some of the world’s most renowned artists, such as Takashi Murakami, Anselm Kiefer, Vladimir Veličković, Tom Sachs, Larry Bell, Dušan Otašević, Helen Marten and many others, Yoko Ono will also present her works of art and projects.

Yoko Ono invites women of Serbia who have been victims of gender violence to be part of the Arising Project within the Belgrade October Salon.

“Write a statement about any violence you have suffered as a woman. Send an image of your eyes and your story.”

The installation compiles the testaments – a text that describes the experience and a photograph of the eyes of the participant – in the Cultural Centre of Belgrade and on the exhibition’s website. Through this instruction, addressed solely to women, Yoko Ono offers catharsis and the opportunity to heal to the women whose bodies and minds have been affected by acts of gender aggression. They are provided with an opportunity to make their stories public in first-person accounts.

ARISING 

A CALL 

WOMEN OF ALL AGES, FROM ALL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD:
YOU ARE INVITED TO SEND A TESTAMENT OF HARM DONE TO YOU
FOR BEING A WOMAN
WRITE YOUR TESTAMENT IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE,
IN YOUR OWN WORDS, AND WRITE HOWEVER OPENLY YOU WISH.
YOU MAY SIGN YOUR FIRST NAME IF YOU WISH,
BUT DO NOT GIVE YOUR FULL NAME. 

SEND A PHOTOGRAPH ONLY OF YOUR EYES 

THE TESTAMENTS OF HARM AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF YOUR EYES
WILL BE EXHIBITED IN MY INSTALLATION ARISING,
SEPTEMBER 15 – OCTOBER 28, 2018
IN THE 57th OCTOBER SALON EXHIBITION, THE MARVELLOUS CACOPHONY, BELGRADE. 

THE INSTALLATION ARISING WILL CONTINUE TO GROW
AND WILL BE EXHIBITED IN MANY COUNTRIES. 

I VERY MUCH HOPE FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION. 

YOKO ONO
MAY 1st, 2018
Knez Mihailova 6/I, Belgrade, Serbia

Bring your testaments and photographs of your eyes in person, or send them by mail to:
BUĐENJE/ARISING c/o OCTOBER SALON, Cultural Centre of Belgrade
Knez Mihailova 6/I, Belgrade, Serbia
or by e-mail to: oktobarskisalon@kcb.rs

Song text by Yoko Ono

RISING

Listen to your heart
Respect your intuition
Make your manifestation
There’s no limitation
Have courage
Have rage
We’re all together

Follow your heart
Use your intuition
Make your manifestation
There’s no confusion
Have courage
Have rage
We’re rising

y.o. 1994.

Recording of the song “Rising”
http://imaginepowerarising.com/#sthash.eiqQjO5D.5d9CS2Cv.dpbs

Yoko Ono is a leading experimental and avant-garde artist. She was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1933; lives in New York. She has been associated with Conceptual art, performance, Fluxus and happenings of the 1960s. She is one of very few women to have participated in these movements, and among the first artists who have questioned the notion of art and the art object and broken down the traditional boundaries between branches of art. She has created a new kind of relationship with spectators, inviting them to play an active part in making her art. She also brings together two worlds – Oriental and Western culture – that extend and strengthen each other in continuous innovation.

As a pioneering conceptual artist and a performance artist, filmmaker, poet, musician, writer, peace and feminist activist for over five decades, Yoko Ono has influenced several generations of artists, musicians and cultural workers across the globe. Throughout her career, she has explored an incredible range of media, coining new kinds of artistic genres – most notably with her instruction pieces, which she began making in the 1950s and continues to devise today. By constantly pushing the boundaries of various media, she prevents the categorization of her artistic practice.

Exhibitions and retrospectives of her artwork have been presented in numerous museums and art spaces around the world. She has received many prestigious awards, including the Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (2009), the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize (2011) and the Oscar Kokoschka Prize (2012), Austria’s highest award for contemporary applied art.

Yoko Ono is well known for her peace initiative, first with the actions she carried out with her husband John Lennon, Bed-In for Peace and War Is Over (If You Want It), and more recently with her Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland and Wish Trees throughout the world. In 2002 she inaugurated a biennial LennonOno Grant for Peace.