Celebrity Media Editor’s Note

At the intersection of art and peace, the International Peace Institute (IPI), in collaboration with the Asia Society, held the opening ceremony of the IPI exhibition of Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree on September 16. Since 1996, Ono’s Wish Tree project has invited people around the world to write down their wishes and tie them to tree branches, gathering into a forest filled with hope and peace. Each small wish tag was not only a record of individual longing but also a symbol of humanity’s collective pursuit of peace. These wishes were ultimately placed at the “Imagine Peace Tower” in Reykjavik, Iceland, joining millions of others as a testimony to the spirit of the times.

This exhibition took place on the eve of the High-Level Week of the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, carrying profound significance. Attending guests personally wrote down their hopes for peace and tied them to the branches on IPI’s terrace, allowing art to come alive through participation and giving form to a shared vision of peace. Art was not merely an expression of beauty, but also a call toward the future. Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree, in its most unadorned form, gathered countless individual voices into a unified global outcry, reminding us that peace once required every person to make a wish together—and even more, it required every person to work together to fulfill it.