Yoko Ono: "Why"

"There is no question more charged, more human, or more unanswerable than "Why?" We are surrounded and acted upon by forces we often can't understand, and we'd all like more answers than are readily available. Even the unexpectedly good is unsettling: What's the catch, you wonder. When will the other shoe drop? But ask "Why?" enough times and it stops being productive. You lose the ability to be present with whatever is happening in front of you. You spin out."

"Like a curious toddler who has just discovered cause and effect, like a philosopher at her wits' end, like a widow at a grave, Yoko Ono asks "Why." She does it over and over, in as many ways as her voice can shape it, on the first song on the first album she released under her own name, 1970's Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band. She shrieks, she scratches. She stretches the word out, trying to determine whether it will break before her voice."

Yoko Ono centers repeated questioning of "Why" as a performative confrontation with uncertainty, using strained vocalizations to physically embody existential distress. The repetition of the question transforms inquiry into a grounding, visceral act rather than detached curiosity. Ono's work repurposes minimal gestures and objects to reveal layered meanings, as in Grapefruit's koan-like pieces and the participatory Wish Tree. Simple gallery interactions, like Ceiling Painting's hidden "yes," convert ordinary acts into moments of wonder and affirmation. The combination of raw sound and conceptual restraint pushes audiences to experience presence, vulnerability, and the profound within the seemingly obvious.

Read at Pitchfork