Yoko Ono aims to wow India’s art world

Yoko Ono, the artist and widow of John Lennon, said Thursday that India’s booming art scene would be fertile ground for her experimental work as she prepared for her first show in the country. Ono, who is renowned for her outlandish ideas, will display multi-media pieces at 20 venues across the capital New Delhi from Friday and also hold a live performance at the weekend. “I will be learning a lot of things from this beautiful and very grand land,” she said, as she returned to the country for the first time since a trip with her late husband in the 1970s. The Japanese-born 78-year-old said her and Lennon, who was shot dead in New York in 1980, visited Mumbai and then travelled to a mountain ashram of a spiritual guru. “It was an incredible experience,” she said. “John and I thought it was something like out of the Bible going up this mountain, but I remember we were told men and women could not sit together at the camp. “John insisted we sit together.” The Beatles famously relocated to the foothills of the Indian Himalayas in 1968 where they adopted a guru, took up meditation and enjoyed a rich song-writing period. Ono said she didn’t know what would happen with her live show in India. “Each live show is different depending on who is there and what feeling I get from the audience,” she said. “I am delighted to find many women running India’s art world,” added Ono, who has been a vocal feminist for decades. Among her most striking live performances is a show when people are encouraged to use scissors to cut pieces off her clothes. Ono, wearing her trademark sunglasses and tilted hat, told reporters that her art was accessible to all and that she hoped Indians would see it as part of her lifelong campaign for world peace. “I don’t think my work is ‘cutting edge.’ I just create something that comes to me as inspiration,” she said. “Right now they are bombing countries ... What would Gandhi think of that?” she added. The Delhi exhibition, called “Our Beautiful Daughters,” is being organized by the private Vadehra Art Gallery and runs until March 10.