Listening, Stepping, Screaming: Feminist Interpretations of Yoko Ono’s Art

Authors

• Cordelia Lavender McPhie

Keywords

Yoko Ono, feminist art, participatory art

Abstract

Long before she spent her time promoting peace through music and her infamous bed-in honeymoon, Yoko Ono was breaking traditional conventions of art by creating and performing her pieces of instruction: art that requires a participating audience in order for it to be made. At the beginning of the 1960s, early in Ono’s art career and before her association with the Beatles, she was participating in new kinds of conceptual and communal art processes within (and without) the Fluxus art movement.1 She is not a solo artist in the traditional sense, because her artwork is unable to be fully realized without audience participation. Freed from worrying about the longevity of her art, Ono emphasized the importance of individual experiences and emotions that the audiences have with her art, reiterating the idea that “the music of the mind”2 matters more than a canvas hanging on a wall.

Recommended Citation

McPhie, Cordelia Lavender (2026) "Listening, Stepping, Screaming: Feminist Interpretations of Yoko Ono’s Art," AWE (A Woman’s Experience): Vol. 12, Article 16.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/awe/vol12/iss1/16