Written by Bhumika Sureka
'Cut Piece' was one of Yoko Ono's first public performances, in which she showed herself and a pair of scissors to a crowd of viewers in a Japanese concert hall in Kyoto. Ono knelt in front of the audience and allowed audience members to approach her and cut and take a little piece of her garment with the scissors. While several viewers clipped a small piece of fabric off the artist's hem, others were more daring and aggressive, slicing big areas of her garment or snipping her bra straps.
By including the audience in the potentially violent act of undressing her body, Ono attacked the apparent neutrality of the connection between viewer and art object.
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