Instructions: Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of a wish tree. Ask your friend to do the same. Keep wishing until the branches are covered.

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Yoko Ono’s WISH TREE project began in 1981. She was originally inspired by her childhood memory of going to a temple in Japan where all the trees were filled with people’s wishes written on pieces of white paper and knotted around the branches of trees. WISH TREE creates a sense of collective energy and hope by alluding to the many versions of this piece that have been performed all over the world.

Here at the Storefront Library, WISH TREE by Yoko Ono for Chinatown was initiated by Hiroko Kikuchi and Jeremy Liu as a way to create opportunities to pass along this same spirit of energy and hope.  It is a site-specific piece that invites all visitors to write their wishes and hang them on a branch.  The message can range from personal wishes for their future and dreams, to community or neighborhood wishes for Chinatown and the Storefront Library. This specific tree was originally used for Ono’s retrospective exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge MA in 2001. Learn more here.

Thank you to Hiroko Kikuchi and Jeremy Liu for bringing the WISH TREE to the Storefront Library and for their generous contribution of art books and multi-lingual materials to the Storefront Library collection.

“All My Works Are A Form Of Wishing. Keep wishing while you participate” -Yoko Ono