Perhaps Yoko Ono was a fly in another life.
If not, how would you explain the close connection she showed with these insects at the beginning of her career in New York? Here’s what happened. In 1971, she was so eager to exhibit her work at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) that she found the way to do so in an unofficial way. She hired a man to stand outside the museum and tell the pedestrians that someone had freed hundreds of flies in the museum’s gardens.These insects had been previously sprayed with one of Yoko Ono’s special perfumes. Then, this man invited the “audience” to go inside and follow these flies on their journey through the city.According to the RTVE website, one photographer followed the insects through all New York and took the pictures that would be part of Ono’s exhibition called Museum of Modern (F)Art. That’s how Yoko Ono made her unofficial debut at the MoMA, through an odd fixation with flies.
She had already made a similar project when she filmed one of her strangest visual experiments: Fly. In it, a fly hops across the naked body of a sedated woman. The insect appears to slowly explore each part of her anatomy, as if it were a lover admiring its partner’s body.
With this performance, she wanted to portray a sense of inner freedom and defend women’s rights. It was also a way to show the human body as a beautiful and paradisiac landscape. This material is available on the internet, and in one particular video, we can even listen to the buzzing of a group of flies. In another one, we can listen to Yoko Ono singing, trying to give a voice to the fly that’s exploring the woman’s body.
While we can only see one fly in each sequence, it actually took 200 flies, stunned with a special gas, to fulfill the project. But who was the woman who helped create this artistic performance? Yoko Ono and her famous husband, John Lennon, hired the actress Virginia Lust to be the model. Although it might seem like a very simple project, it took a couple of days to complete. Shoot with a 35 mm camera, Fly was created in the attic of a New York building. Here’s some backstage footage of the project:
If you thought this weird relationship between Yoko Ono and these flying insects ended here, you’re wrong. In March 1971, the Japanese artist edited an album called… Fly, of course. Produced by John Lennon and Ono herself, it’s a record as avant-garde and experimental as her own artwork. It’s an album that overflows imagination and is filled with sounds that are hard to classify in a music genre or style. Yoko Ono used the single, named after the project, as the soundtrack to complement the images of her audiovisual work.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokio in 1933. She’s a multifaceted artist who combines music, writing, film, and drawing to create art pieces that reflect important subjects like sex, homophobia, or even daily emotions and sensations. She has a very particular vision of the world: she believes people are interconnected, and the dialog between the artist and her work has the power to move the entire universe. In an interview with the Mexican magazine Letras Libres, Ono said: “Poor and unknown people are always wondering what they can do. Just think! Your mind is affecting the entire world. We’re all connected. Forget about thinking you have to do something huge, and focus on the small things. We’re ‘little circles,’ like little pebbles. Throw one, that’s it.”
Many performances tend to be more controversial than artistic. The thin line dividing art and the weird makes many art lovers criticize this particular discipline. For instance, check this artist who surgically reconstructed her hymen to be a virgin again. Also, don’t miss these 4 performances recreated by a supermodel to make fun of contemporary art.
*Source:
Letras Libres
Morbo
RTVE
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Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
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