It doesn’t matter where you live, if you have a social media account,
you’ve probably seen work by Yayoi Kusama. Who is this Japanese lady that’s taken over our feeds,
what’s the deal with her affinity for polka dots, and what makes her installations
so picturesque, cutting-edge, and Instagram worthy? Keep watching to find out,
and don’t forget to like and subscribe for more art content from Curious Muse!
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Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who works in multiple distinct disciplines,
including sculpture, performance, fashion, and painting. She is associated with American
Abstract expressionism, Art Brut, feminist art, and conceptual art just to name a few.
She first gained worldwide recognition for her large colorful immersive installations
and soft sculptures but has grown, changed, and tried new things over multiple decades.
Kusama was born back in 1929 in the city of Matsumoto, Japan
during the Great Depression. Her family were hard-working merchants who owned a seed farm
and weren't understanding or supportive of their daughter’s growing interest in the creative arts.
Things were so bad at home that some accounts state Kusama's mother was physically abusive.
Because of that, the young artist started developing symptoms of mental illness at an early
age, including vivid hallucinations starting at 10 years old. Despite her family's hopes that she
would uphold tradition and become a respectable housewife, Kusama instead enrolled in the Kyoto
City University of Arts after the end of WWII and began studying Japanese Nihonga style painting.
Art began to be the driving force in her life and in 1958, Kusama moved to New York City with
the goal of finding worldwide fame. Inspired by the works of Georgia O'Keefe and the artists
associated with Abstract Expressionism, Kusama began exhibiting large-scale abstract paintings
of polkadots, which she referred to as "infinity nets". The process of painting these nets provided
great therapeutic value for Kusama, whose mental health sadly hadn't improved since leaving Japan.
In her own words, art had become a way to "fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only
method she had found that relieved her illness". The polka dot continued to be a leitmotif in
her practice as she transitioned from painting to performance and installation. During the 1960s and
1970s, Kusama organized public events in which she painted polka dots on herself and nude performers
as a form of protest. Many of her works during that time held a strong political stance against
the Vietnam War. In 1966, the artist displayed her work entitled “Narcissus Garden” at the 33rd
Venice Biennale despite not being formally included in the exhibition. It wasn’t until
27 years later that she was invited to represent the Japan Pavilion in the 45th Venice Biennale.
Leaving New York behind, Yayoi Kusama returned to Japan in 1973. Then, in 1977,
after years of struggles, she voluntarily checked herself into a mental institution in Tokyo
and has been a permanent resident there ever since. To this day, she spends 9 hours each day
working in her large Tokio studio, and returning to the hospital overnight.
The art world moved on and, due to the dynamic and highly competitive nature of
the New York art scene, Kusama was all but forgotten during the late 1970s and 1980s.
However, in 1989, curator and Asian art expert Alexandra Munroe organized the first
retrospective of Kusama's works in the Center for International Contemporary Arts. Ever since then,
the world has renewed its fascination with the works of Yayoi Kusama, especially what she calls
environmental art: large, all-encompassing immersive installations in which the viewer
gets to enter Kusama’s mind and her world. Kusama’s Infinity Rooms, which she has been
developing for over two decades, are mirrored installations filled with brightly colored
pumpkin sculptures, polka dots, and UV lights that invite audiences to enter
and become enveloped by the artist’s visions, empathizing with her state of mind.
One of Kusama’s Infinity Rooms, a work entitled All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins,
broke the record of visitors at the Hirshhorn Museum in 2017. Over 34 thousand images of
the work were shared across social media, and the hashtag #InfiniteKusama garnered over 330
million engagements on Instagram. These days, the world still can’t seem to get enough of her works:
a new exhibit in the Hirshhorn Museum entitled One with Eternity is open to visitors this year,
and two of Kusama’s Infinity Rooms will be on view in Tate Modern until June 2023.
Still active after over seven decades, Yayoi Kusama remains a trailblazer within the art world.
The artist spearheaded many vital, major shifts in 20th century fine arts, from her early soft
sculptures and socially engaged happenings, to her expansion of multidisciplinary art forms.
More importantly, she has paved the way for many other Asian and female artists
to find recognition, as well as opened up a discussion about mental health while bringing
fine art closer to people. Kusama’s works are unapologetically visceral,
actively blurring the line between the artwork, the artist, and the audience as well. They call
upon the observer to (quite literally) step into a space of collective healing.
Have you had a chance to visit the world of Yayoi Kusama? Do you think art should be immersive like
hers? Let us know in the comments section, and don’t forget to like and subscribe to
our channel to see more interesting content about art, culture, history, and the world at large.
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