Yoko Ono, Shadow Piece (Put Your Shadows Together Until fashion They Become One), 2012 Exhibition Poster

27 1/2 x 39 3/8 fashion in
70 x 100 cm
An exhibition poster from Moderna Museet, Sweden, published on the occasion of Yoko Ono's exhibition "Grapefruit" in 2012.
This exhibition highlighted the book "Grapefruit", which Yoko Ono self-published in Japan in 1964. The book is a collection of texts, so-called instruction pieces, and has been reprinted in many editions over the years. The texts can be described as short instructions for making paintings, events, objects, music and films. Grapefruit is a collection of suggestions for works of art – ideas that can be carried out, or simply take shape in the viewer's imagination, revealing the poetry of trivial everyday things and rituals. Grapefruit is a book about the power of thought and the art of becoming. In the 1960s, Yoko Ono emerged as an influential artist on the New York avant-garde scene and in the Fluxus movement.
When asked why the book is called Grapefruit, Yoko Ono has often referred to the popular notion of the grapefruit as a hybrid between a lemon and an orange, and this hybrid as a metaphor for her own identity. Yoko Ono was born in Japan in 1933 but moved back and forth between Japan and the USA with her family throughout the 1940s, while the Second World War shook the relationship between East and West. Yoko Ono was one of very few women artists in the circle where conceptual art developed around 1960. Her legendary series of loft concerts on Lower Manhattan attracted fellow-artists such as John Cage, David Tudor, La Monte Young and Marcel Duchamp. She built an enticing platform for her work on the avant-garde scenes of New York, Tokyo and London, long before she met John Lennon, with whom she lived until his death in 1980. Yoko Ono's artistic voice oscillates sharp wit and haiku poetry that encourages contemplation, and like few others she has succeeded to create an interesting dialogue between the Eastern and Western avant-garde.
(Text: Cecilia Widenheim, courtesy of Moderna Museet)"