Yoko Ono’s First French Retrospective at MAC Lyon

The Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (MAC) presents 'Lumière de l’aube', the first French retrospective of Yoko Ono, curated by Jon Hendricks. The exhibition occupies all 3,000 square meters of the Renzo Piano-designed building in the Cité Internationale, overlooking Parc de la Tête d’Or. Ono, born in Tokyo in 1933 and winner of the Golden Lion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, showcases over 100 works from 1952 to 2016, including drawings, installations, instructions, poems, sculptures, performances, songs, and videos. The show explores themes of participation, awareness, equality, and wabi-sabi aesthetics. Key works include inverted military helmets with puzzle pieces, Duchampian chess tables (Play It by Trust), conical soil mounds symbolizing violence against women, identical transparent containers labeled with names of musicians, artists, poets, and scientists (We Are All Water), wooden ladders, a glass labyrinth with a toilet at its center, and a giant magnet attracting metal objects in a kitchen scene. A bourgeois living room is bisected, and Cut Piece (1965/2013) is shown as a simultaneous video. The title 'Lumière de l’aube' pays homage to the Lumière brothers and features an interactive piece where visitors complete a questionnaire before entering a dark room to experience a simulated dawn. The exhibition runs until July 17, 2016.