Yoko Ono: Cut Piece Performed by Peaches

As part of the solo exhibition YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, Berlin-based artist and musician Peaches will stage Yoko Ono’s groundbreaking Cut Piece in the atrium of Gropius Bau. First performed in Kyoto in 1964, Cut Piece is one of Ono’s earliest and most influential performance works. At the first performance of Cut Piece, Yoko Ono sat alone on the stage of the Yamaichi Concert Hall, a pair of scissors placed in front of her. She invited audience members to join her on stage, one by one, to cut pieces from her clothing, which they were allowed to keep. Ono herself remained almost motionless. By confronting the objectification of bodies perceived as female and dissolving the boundaries between passivity and activity, artist and audience, Cut Piece became a seminal work of feminist art and the art movement Fluxus. Yoko Ono herself performed Cut Piece several times, with many other performers following. In 2013, Peaches also staged the piece at the Meltdown Festival, having been personally invited by Ono. Later, Ono remarked that Cut Piece would likely “never be performed with such eloquence again”. Yoko Ono is an artist, musician and activist. Born in Tokyo in 1933, Ono grew up in Japan, with periods spent abroad in San Francisco and New York. By 1960 she had become a vital part of New York’s community of artists and composers. Over the next decade, she developed her visionary practice in art, performance, music and film, with iconic works including Cut Piece and her book Grapefruit (both 1964). An iconic feminist musician, producer, director and performance artist, Peaches has spent more than two decades pushing boundaries and breaking barriers, dramatically altering the landscape of popular culture. Through music, art, film, theater, television and books, she has upended stereotypes and embraced taboos, challenging social norms and patriarchal power structures while championing LGBTQIA+ rights and issues of gender and sexual identity Content Note: The performance may contain nudity. The performance takes place on the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin.