The exhibition YOKO ONO – PEACE is POWER opens at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo on 1 December. In the weeks before, the world-famous artist’s messages of peace will light up Norwegian cities.
For the first time since 2005, the world leading artist and peace activist Yoko Ono, is exhibiting in Norway. YOKO ONO – PEACE is POWER, opens at the Nobel Peace Center on 1 December, as a part of the center’s reopening after months of closure due to renovation. The exhibition includes some of Yoko Ono’s most known participatory works, inviting visitors to engage in their creation by following the artist’s own instructions.
“For Yoko Ono, the message of peace, activism, and art go hand in hand,” says the Nobel Peace Center’s Executive Director Kjersti Fløgstad. “Her participatory art is completely in line with the Nobel Peace Center’s mission to inspire small- and large-scale changes that can help make the world a more peaceful place.”
Two weeks before the exhibition opens, from 13 November, a public peace campaign will leave its mark on cities across Norway. Large billboards in urban areas and subway stations will be filled with messages of peace. Yoko Ono and John Lennon first began public advertising campaigns for peace in 1969 with their iconic WAR IS OVER! If you want it campaign. Yoko Ono has continued public campaigns for peace to this day. In March 2022, after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an IMAGINE PEACE campaign lit up billboards in the cities of New York, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Berlin, Rome, Melbourne, Tokyo, and Seoul. The campaign in Norway is in a cooperation between the Nobel Peace Center, Yoko Ono’s studio and Clear Channel and will last for one week.
“The peace messages Yoko Ono and John Lennon formulated during the Vietnam War are, unfortunately, just as relevant today. We hope the campaign will engage the thousands of people who pass them on their way to work”, Fløgstad said.
Ono in Oslo and London
At 90, Yoko Ono is opening not only the exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in December 2023, but also an exhibition at Tate Modern in London in February 2024. The exhibition YOKO ONO – PEACE is POWER is curated especially for the Nobel Peace Center, in cooperation with the former director of the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Gunnar B. Kvaran.
“Yoko Ono, who grew up in Tokyo, was 12 when the nuclear bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her deep engagement for peace has permeated her more than 60-year long career as artist and activist and makes her art fit extraordinary well in a place like the Nobel Peace Center”, says Kvaran.
Welcome to a press preview of the exhibition YOKO ONO – PEACE is POWER at the Nobel Peace Center on Friday