Cut Piece (1965)

Ono’s work related destruction to interpersonal, often intimate, human relations. This element was particularly thought-provoking in ‹Cut Piece›, one of many actions she did as DIAS [Destruction in Art Symposium]. Ono had first done the performance in 1964, in Japan, and again at Carnegie Hall, in New York, in 1965. Ono sat motionless on the stage after inviting the audience to come up and cut away her clothing, covering her breasts at the moemnt of unbosoming. ‹Cut Piece› entailed a disrobing, a denouement of the reciprocity between exhibitionism and scopic desires, between victim and assailant, between sadist and masochist: and, as a heterosexual herselft, Ono unveiled the gendered relationship of male and female subjects as objects for each other.
(source: Kristine Stiles,«Uncorrupted Joy: International Art Actions,» in: Out of Actions: between performance and the object, 1949–1979, Paul Schimmel (ed.), MoCA Los Angeles, New York/London, 1998, p. 278.)