“War Is Over (If You Want It)” proclaims one of the pieces at Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Exhibit. This message of peace is probably as pertinent in this generation, an era replete with wars in Libya and in the ongoing War On Terror.
The exhibit, which is set to run in the Staller Art Center until October 15th, is a multimedia display which highlights Ms. Ono’s late ‘60’s peace effort with her husband, John Lennon, with particular emphasis of the couple’s Bed-In and War Is Over! Campaigns.
To enter the exhibit, is to enter a utopia; just walking into the exhibit is to be inundated with white, resembling some sort of celestial terrain. The very serene atmosphere artfully conveys the power of this peaceful ideal. For instance, one piece in the exhibit, presented dead center as if it were the pièce de résistance, is of a rather quirky, enlarged chessboard. The quirk of this board is that there happens to be no black tiles, or pieces. The tacit understanding of the piece would be, that if everyone were the same, then fighting, or competing, would be meaningless.
Rhonda Cooper, Director of the University Art Gallery, is one of those believers in the exhibit, in peace. Ono’s utopian ideal, she believes, are still as pertinent today as it was in the ‘60’s.
“There is still a chance,” she says, “that if everybody gets together, and wants peace strongly enough, we might get it.”
The exhibit tried to bridge the past with the present, presenting new pieces from Ms. Ono. One of the pieces is an interactive piece, where visitors are welcomed to stamp “Imagine Peace” across maps of the World, of the United States, and of New York.
What differentiates this exhibit from most agitprop is the earnestness. The thing that makes ‘60’s nostalgia is that so inexhaustible, especially with artists, is the sincerity in peace, and in a sort of a Dionysian nature. Hopefully, this exhibit will not be viewed as a collection of antiquities, rather a vibrant introspection of what can be achieved. As Yoko Ono said about her work, “all my work is in the form of wishing”. It only takes one.
