Yoko Ono | Wish Tree Garden

About

The installation has been created specifically for Copenhagen Contemporary and will be a permanent feature of the harbour area in front of the halls until December 2017.

Since 1996, Yoko Ono has been creating the artwork Wish Tree, which consists of one or more trees installed all around the world. The work is site-specific; that is, each tree species is chosen for its importance to the location, and when possible, is indigenous to the place and its climate, in collaboration with Ono. On a slip of paper, a so-called ‘wish tag’, anyone can write a wish and hang it on the branches of the trees. In Wish Tree Garden at Papirøen, trees from the Danish and Asian landscape grow on the Copenhagen quayside. Lilac, Reed Gråsten apple, Cornelian cherry dogwood, Magnolia and Tibetan cherry tree all create the impression of a garden you can walk in and see blossoming, changing colour and losing the leaves in the course of the changing seasons. The slips of paper on the branches of the trees flutter in the wind, and all the individual wishes give the garden a poetic dimension.

All the wishes are regularly collected and when the exhibition ends they will be sent to Yoko Ono.  Eventually, wishes from all over the world will be gathered together in Ono’s Imagine Peace Tower on the island of Viðey in Kollafjörður Bay, Iceland: an art installation that consists of a tall column of light dedicated to Ono’s late husband, John Lennon. The wishes from CC will join millions of others that have already been collected since 1996 from other places in the world, and will be placed at the Peace Tower.