MPA reimagines Yoko Ono's Cut Piece in Los Angeles
Artist MPA has restaged Yoko Ono’s iconic Cut Piece in Los Angeles, transforming a 1960s study of gendered violence into a quiet demonstration of collective empathy.
Artist MPA restaged Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece at the Redcat in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, commissioned by the Broad museum for its current Ono retrospective, Music of the Mind.
Like the original work, the performance saw the artist sit silently on stage while audience members used scissors to remove her clothing. MPA wore a sculptural black gown by Aliona Kononova and heels by United Nude, her hair pulled into a tight bun to prevent it from being trimmed. The piece concluded after 64 minutes when a participant snipped off her final garment.
When Ono performed the work in 1965, male spectators aggressively cut into her bra at Carnegie Hall. In Los Angeles, the dynamic shifted entirely. Participants crouched to the artist’s level, made careful incisions and placed the scissors on the floor parallel to her rather than pointing them in her direction. One woman cut a corner of her own shirt in solidarity.
MPA, a queer artist with a collaborative bent, performed the piece on 18 and 19 July. Before beginning, she noted that Cut Piece does not have a single score, pointing out that Ono reframed it over time from an exploration of gendered violence to a peace offering. MPA read a 2008 statement from Ono addressing personal vulnerability in a post-9/11 world, which mentioned the death of US peace activist Rachel Corrie in Gaza.
“I don’t undress for performance art anymore,” MPA told the audience. “But for this one I said yes.” She opened the performance by transforming a peace sign into a scissors gesture, a physical acknowledgement that the piece contains both the threat of violence and the protective power of a community.
Standing naked at the end, MPA held up a mat displaying two aphorisms. One side featured Ono’s line: “My body is the scar of my mind.” The other displayed MPA’s own text: “My body is made of (g)rapes&vines”. The dual messages captured the central tension of the restaging, presenting the vulnerability of the body as a site that can tip seamlessly between violation and care.
