Words by:  Akira Kerr
Art by:  Ava Toon

Despite having been in their prime over 50 years ago, The Beatles are still a household name. ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’, ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Help!’ soundtracked my childhood, thanks to my dad and his Beatlemanic mother.

I remember learning of John Lennon’s death as if it had been a recent occurrence, sitting on the couch watching some video or documentary about it, rather than an event that happened 20 years before I was born. The Beatles pervaded my life alongside Scissor Sisters, Lily Allen and Coldplay, and I suppose it speaks to their timelessness that I wasn’t aware of their seniority to these early 2000s artists. 

Someone I was entirely unaware of though was Lennon’s second wife Yoko Ono. 

If your social media feed is anything like mine, you’ve likely come across the 1972 video of John Lennon and Chuck Berry singing together, as Chuck grows increasingly wide-eyed when Yoko begins to wail like a banshee into the microphone. This video has resurfaced on those random meme pages we all follow but don’t quite remember doing so, and features text pointing out how they had ‘turned off the mic’ because Yoko was ‘ruining’ the performance. 

This resurfaced clip and its accompanying ridicule is only the tip of the iceberg in the kind of hate Yoko faced since she entered the West’s consciousness. The world hated her because she was this strange woman from Japan who had swept in and made everyone’s favourite band break up. She brain-washed Lennon into falling in love with her, becoming her mini-me, matching hair and all, with him spouting nonsense about how there should be peace in the world. She was made out to be responsible for Lennon’s estrangement from his first son Julian. Paul McCartney appeared in interview after interview, constantly being asked about how Yoko made his life difficult, and how her presence in recording sessions was an intrusion to their creative work. 

Despite having lived a whole 33 years before meeting Lennon, and a whole 45 years (and counting) after he was killed, her entire legacy is still all about him. So, instead of telling you any more about the period of her life embroiled in scandal and having her character assassinated by the Western media, I will tell you about some of the defying things she has done since. 

2004 Liverpool Biennial 

I’m not sure if this one counts, but I will tell you about it anyway. In response to her invitation to participate in the International 04, she decided to pay tribute to John Lennon’s mother, who had died when he was a teenager. The project, My Mummy was Beautiful involved the city of Liverpool becoming a gallery of two images: a woman’s breast and vulva. Consisting of 21 one-metre square canvases, the project was designed to emulate the entry of a child into humanity, where Yoko said: “One has to look up at the vagina and the breasts on the ceiling – rather like looking up at your mum’s body when you are a baby.” 

2007: Yes I’m a Witch 

‘Yes, I’m a Witch’ is a collaborative remix album featuring artists creating covers of songs in Yoko’s music catalogue. The song choices span from her earliest experimental work with Lennon in the 60s through to her work as a solo artist in the 70s and 80s. The title track ‘Yes, I’m a Witch,’ which starts with the lyrics “yes, I’m a witch, I’m a bitch, I don’t care what you say,” not only openly speaks to the treatment she received when she was in a relationship with John Lennon, but is a defiant anthem against the suppression of women. Yes, I’m a Witch Too, a similarly collaborative album, was released in 2015. 

2011-2012: Multiple Awards over Two Years

In 2011 and 2012 she was awarded multiple awards for her life’s achievements. She collected the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize in 2011, and in the same year, had raised $33,000 with her son Sean Oko Lennon in a benefit concert for the earthquake and tsunamis in the North-Eastern Region of Japan’s main island. She was also awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dublin Biennial and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria’s highest award for applied contemporary art. 

2019: Refugee Boat 

Adding to her long legacy of participatory art, she took part in Lower Manhattan’s River to River Festival with an installation called Add Color (Refugee Boat). The piece consisted of a white rowing boat placed in a white room, where audience members were invited to draw and write on it. The participation in the artwork symbolised Yoko’s message of honouring the US migrant history and the need for solidarity. 

It’s fitting that Yoko’s first name in Japanese quite literally means ‘child of the West’ (洋子). It’s almost as if she was destined to subvert the rigidity of the culture at the time she entered it, before making it her own. She refused to adjust herself to fit, she made bold statements about the society she was living in and she fought for peace in every matter that arose. She is our lady beatle.