Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese woman who made her title as an avant-garde artist, raised in Matsumoto before moving to New York in 1958, as recommended by her therapist who said her dysfunctional family would swallow her whole. Kusama was a diamond in the rough, having at first had to use scraps she found and mud sacks to craft her art after her mom threw out all of her supplies. Her mother condemned Kusama’s passion for art which only fueled her further. Her most popular works that gained traction delve into psychedelic and what she calls, a ‘self obliteration’. Many if not all of her works are hallucinatory projections and this notably comes in the form of polka dots — her trademark.
Yayoi Kusama, Transmigration , 2011
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Room, 2013
“These rooms reflect all of her elements: her obsessions, her accumulations, her infinite repetitions. And it’s all very bodily and immersive,” Yoshitake said.
But there was a time before she adapted to the new scene. Her works when she was still a fresh and new, innovative artist had much to do with innate promiscuity and elemental nudity. Kusama abhorred sex, lost and disoriented with the concept of skinship and intimacy, stemming from childhood trauma. This trauma translated into her early works, many of which that puts multitudes of phallic objects on display to more performative pieces of nude men and women alike.
Yayoi Kusama posing with , New York. ©Yayoi Kusama and Yayoi Kusama Studios Inc.
A nude happening and fashion show at Kusama’s Studio, New York, 1968
”I don’t know how long I’m going to survive even after I die; there is a future generation that is following in my footsteps,” she said, sitting in the bright open space that is her new gallery in central Tokyo. “I would be highly honored if people would like to look at my work and be moved by my work.”