ART CITIES: Copenhagen-Yoko Ono

The “Wish Tree” is an ongoing art installation series by Yoko Ono, started sometime after 1981, in which a tree native to a site is planted under her direction. Viewers are usually invited to tie a written wish to the tree except during the winter months when a tree can be more vulnerable.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Copenhagen Contemporary Archive

Yoko Ono’s Installation “Wish Tree Garden” has been created specifically for Copenhagen Contemporary (CC) and is a permanent part of CC’s harbour area in front of the exhibition halls. For Yoko Ono an artwork must create desire and arouse the spectator’s curiosity: “All my works are a form of wishing. Keep wishing while you participate”. She often talks about how, as a child in Japan, she wrote out wishes on small pieces of paper which she then tied around the branches of trees in temple courtyards. Yoko Ono thus encourages the public to become involved in the construction of the work, by sharing this desire to make wishes, by identifying desires and daring to write them down on small pieces of paper. “Wish Tree” is an invitation to meditate on the meaning of life and the importance of hope, desire and communication. Visitors are invited to leave a record with their words and impressions on small blank labels hung on the branches of the Wish Tree, and they become metaphorical actors in a collective dynamic movement. The wishes collected in this way by Yoko Ono are then kept at the site of “Imagine Peace Tower”, created by Yoko Ono in 2007 in memory of John Lennon, a beam of light and hope that illuminates the sky of Kollafjörður Bay, Iceland. The wishes from CC will be buried around the Tower along with the millions of other wishes that have been collected since 1996 from other places in the world.

Info: Copenhagen Contemporary, Trangravsvej 10-14, Copenhagen, Duration: 1/7/16-31/12/17,  Days &Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-21:00, http://cphco.org