cover #20 yoko ono

A VOICE FOR PEACE

SILENCE, RESISTANCE, RENACITY, GENTLENESS

essay

by JÉRÒME SANS

 

Silence, resistance, tenacity, gentleness — a lifetime of artistic engagement for peace. Imagine Peace is a work by the Japanese artist Yoko Ono that the world seems destined to continue hearing. Not because the artist doubts her own affirmation, or because she is searching for herself, but because the world still has not fully understood this work. Because the world keeps shattering our fragile peace and forever rekindling eternal conflicts. For more than half a century, the artist has been repeating this message. She repeats it with gentleness and obstinacy. She repeats it in newspapers, on city walls, projected in the sky, on screens, and on the volcanic stones of islands. She repeats it in 24 languages, so that no one can claim not to have heard the message. She tirelessly repeats these two words: “Imagine peace.”…