John Lennon once said that Yoko Ono was “the world's most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does.” Considering people still refer to her in relation to Lennon and The Beatles, we have to agree with him. The 82-year-old Japanese avant-garde artist has dabbled in everything from music and filmmaking to performance art and sculpture, and with her recent announcement regarding a new public installation called SKY LANDING in Chicago’s Jackson Park home, she’s clearly not planning on resting any time soon.
Ono has kept pretty quiet on what the installation will be like, but did announce that it won’t be ready until June 2016. The artist chose the famed Chicago park as the location because of inspiration she felt there while visiting in 2013. According to Project 120, a not-for-profit organization overseeing the project, Ono felt a sense of place and history when she first visited, saying “I want the sky to land here, to cool it, and make it well again.” Her wish for the sky to meet the earth is the inspiration behind SKY LANDING, which will be her very first public artwork in the United States, and when finished the piece will apparently bring a “child’s sense of hopefulness to the public realm” in a way that will make visitors feel “a communal connection to earth and sky.”
Without much else to go on, we will just have to wait with the rest of you and hope that Ono continues to drop little kernels of hints between now and June 2016.
