A wish is a deeply personal thing, often fleeting and silent. But sometimes, a wish is a collective endeavor, a bold and communal call for action.
Yoko Ono’s “Wish Tree” installation is both. The piece — which Ono has staged more than 250 times in 35-plus countries — draws on a Japanese tradition at Buddhist temples that invites visitors to scribble their hopes and dreams onto paper tags and tie them to the branches of a tree. The wishes are left dangling amid the tree leaves, like budding fruit.
Ono’s very first “Wish Tree” — a baby grapefruit tree planted in a wooden box — was shown in 1996 at Santa Monica’s Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Bergamot Station. It was part of Ono’s solo show there. After the exhibition closed, the gallery planted the tree on its property. It was so meaningful to Wayne that when her gallery left Bergamot Station in 2018 (it’s now located in West Adams), she re-planted the iconic tree in her own backyard — in Pacific Palisades. It tragically burned in last year’s wildfire.
Now, 30 years after its initial debut, a grove of “Wish Trees” is in bloom at the Broad museum. And they appear to be much needed right now, given the voracious response from the public. The installation, “Wish Trees for Los Angeles,” is part of Ono’s solo exhibitionat the Broad, “Music of the Mind.” Outside, on the museum’s East West Bank Plaza, 10 century-old olive trees are brimming with paper wishes from the public. Together, the bounty of wishes reflect our collective mood in L.A., offering a prismatic snapshot of our hopes, frustrations, anxieties, dreams and desires at this moment in time.
“Ono’s work is ever-relevant and it connects with people where they are, regardless of the context. But of course, right now, we need a place to put hope and think about making the world better,” said Broad curator and exhibitions manager Sarah Loyer. “We’re in a really difficult, dark place globally, nationally, and all of the ways we’ve experienced that as a city with the effects of climate change, the fires and ICE. It feels really important that we have space for hope and reflection.”
On a recent morning, hundreds of sun-dappled wishes shimmied in the tree leaves in at least 10 languages: English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, Chinese, Persian, French and Turkish among them. They’d all been penned that day. Nearby on a table were paper tags, pens and instructions, which included asking a friend “to do the same. Keep wishing.”
Some wishes called for world peace or the end to war. Others spoke to financial hardships, like the desire to buy a home or keep a job. Many wished for strength to combat physical or mental illness. A slew of wishes echoed the universal yearnings for health, wealth and true love.
“Wishing for a free Iran,” one tag read in Persian.
“PEACE,” echoed another.
“I wish for things to make sense,” read another.
One particularly moving wish hung by a small bunch of flowers tucked into a tree trunk nook: “Wishing to find the strength to let go of the weight of the pain my mother brings me in the final years of her life on this earth.”
A Broad visitor experience team member, whose first name is Ash, was especially touched by a wish written in Spanish.
“It was a child wishing that their parents’ visa would be approved,” she said. “Being Latina and living in L.A. right now, that hit so close to home. I have a lot of experience wishing for the safety of the people in my community.”
There was levity as well: “I wish for a new game in Poki,” one tag read; “I wish for you to have a wish come true,” read another.
When words fell short, visitors to the installation drew pictures: a house surrounded by hearts; a smiling cat; a bowl full of wishes.
The need for a communal outlet for hope was not lost on the Broad. It accelerated the opening of the wider exhibition in order to bring it to Angelenos at a time when, the museum felt, people especially needed it.
The response to the “Wish Trees” was immediate. Even before the exhibition was open to the public, as the museum was readying for a private press preview, passersby on Grand Avenue grabbed paper tags from the outdoor installation’s instructions table and began filling the olive trees with their desires, the Broad said. The museum had designated one central tree to be the official “Wish Tree” and it had built an elevated platform around the trunk base, so visitors could reach the branches more easily. The public filled that tree on day one — and then spread their wishes to the surrounding trees, all of which are now part of the artwork.
Broad staffers now “harvest” the wishes from the trees every day, cutting them down and saving the “trimmings” in a box to make room for new paper tags (it draws about 500 to 800 wishes a day). When the exhibition is over, it plans to mail the wishes to Ono’s studio in New York, which has so far amassed more than 2 million wishes internationally.
Visitors interacted with the artwork in myriad ways.
Two young women who appeared to be in their early 20s posed for selfies under a “Wish Tree,” mouths pursed. As they walked away, one of their tags fell to the ground: “I want to be famous,” it read.
Behind them, Lauren Lloyd, 33, visiting from Nashville, sat earnestly scribbling on her wish tag, which was filled from edge to edge with neat script.
“I think that when you’re surrounded by so much opportunity to see negativity, having an opportunity to see the positive, joyful, wishful thinking people have is very powerful — especially seeing it physically and not just scrolling [online],” she said.
Newlyweds Tito Avalos, 26, and Andrea Avalos, 24, who were visiting from El Salvador, tied their wishes to a tree together, their wrists entwined and fingers clasped. A street performer crooned, in the background: “I can’t help falling in love with you…”
“I think it’s really powerful — it’s a little bit romantic,” Tito said, adding that he’d wished “for a life of more travels and to visit a lot of countries.”
Andrea said that she’d wished for “a happy life together.”
“And more travels too!” Tito chimed in.
The most spirited response of the day came from 12-year-old Jailene Pimentel, between bites of a Subway sandwich. She lives in the West Adams area and was on a school trip to the Broad from Jane B. Eisner Middle School.
“I think it’s nice that people are so hopeful,” she said, adding that the positivity had surprised her.
Why? “Because of everything going on, like ICE, Trump. But people still wish for the best.”
As the wind kicked up, the wishes rustled, as if in conversation.
“To have a child.”
“To go to camp.”
“Prosperity.”
Seeing the accumulation of other people’s innermost desires in the trees — and given that the wishes are uncovered — lends the work an openness and accessibility that can be therapeutic, Loyer said.
“You can come away with a sense of healing, community and connection to a wider public or a sense of urgency to take more action,” she said. “It’s about spreading that message of peace.”
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