Yoko Ono, IMAGINE PEACE

Fifty-three years after Bed-In, Yoko Ono stages a new global intervention by pausing commercial advertisements on the world’s most prominent digital screens to share a message of peace with the global community. An invitation for the world to unite, Ono will broadcast her powerful, universal mantra IMAGINE PEACE every evening at 20:22. 

The public art installation presented by CIRCA in collaboration with Serpentine, will feature local translations of Yoko Ono’s message to the world. IMAGINE PEACE launched 3 March on London’s Piccadilly Lights and is screening across the CIRCA network in London, Los Angeles, Milan, Melbourne, New York, Seoul and Tokyo every evening throughout March 2022. 

IMAGINE PEACE is a concept born from Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s tireless work as peace activists. In March 1969, the couple staged their first Bed-In – a weeklong peace protest from their honeymoon suite at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, boldly communicating their commitment to social justice. This new declaration for peace also marks Ono’s return to London’s Piccadilly Circus, twenty years since she installed a poster carrying the message “Imagine all the people living life in peace” taken from the Lennon-Ono anthem – “Imagine” in March 2002. 

Yoko Ono’s invitation to IMAGINE PEACE has been expressed since the early 2000s through billboards, advertisements, posters and tweets. “Imagining,” said Ono, “is something that we can all do, even when we have different opinions about how to get there.” In 2007, in memory of John Lennon Ono conceived the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Viðey Island off the coast of Reykjavík, Iceland, a tower of beaming light, which represents wisdom and love, and acts as a beacon for all those wishing to contribute to world peace. 

A limited edition print by Yoko Ono is available to purchase on CIRCA.ART for £100. 100% of proceeds will be donated to the United Nations CERF. 

The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), one of the fastest and most effective ways to ensure that urgent humanitarian assistance, including food, clean water, medicine, education and shelter, reaches people in need whenever and wherever crises strike.

Yoko Ono is one of the most influential and pioneering artists of the past century. Spanning conceptual art, performance, music, film, writing and activism, her work has consistently challenged conventional ways of thinking, inviting audiences to become active participants in the creation of meaning. For more than six decades, she has demonstrated how simple ideas can inspire profound acts of imagination, empathy and social change.

Born in Tokyo in 1933 and later moving to New York, Ono emerged as a central figure within the international avant-garde and Fluxus movements of the 1960s. Her groundbreaking works, including Cut Piece (1964) and Grapefruit (1964), helped define conceptual and participatory art, while her collaborations with John Lennon transformed art and peace activism into a global cultural force. Throughout her career, Ono has returned to a recurring proposition: that imagining a different world is the first step towards creating one.

Yoko Ono’s relationship with CIRCA has centred on the enduring power of public art as a vehicle for collective action. In 2022, she presented IMAGINE PEACE, a global intervention that paused commercial advertising screens across multiple cities to share a simple yet urgent message of hope. Presented in partnership with Serpentine, the project extended a concept that has appeared throughout Ono’s work for decades, from billboards and posters to the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland. Accompanied by a time-limited edition that raised $430,320 for the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the commission demonstrated how art can mobilise audiences worldwide in support of humanitarian relief.

Awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale and celebrated internationally for her contributions to contemporary art, music and peace activism, Ono continues to inspire generations of artists, thinkers and changemakers. Through works that unite imagination with action, she remains a powerful reminder that art can be both a personal gesture and a catalyst for global transformation.