Yayoi Kusama
Artwork Labels & Didactics

Yayoi Kusama
Japanese born 1929, worked in the United States 1957–73

Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees
2002/2024
mixed media

Courtesy of the artist, Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner

In this installation, Kusama’s signature polka dots extend beyond the walls of the NGV to envelop the trees on St Kilda Road. Since her initial presentation of Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees at the Kirishima Open Air Museum in Japan in 2002, Kusama has re-imagined the work in urban spaces across the globe, from Helsinki’s Esplanadi park to the New York Botanical Garden. The work is typically presented with white-on-red polka-dotted fabric, but for this iteration the artist has replaced red with a bold pink, uniting the installation with the pink-and-black polka dots covering the nearby Waterwall.

Yayoi Kusama
Japanese born 1929, worked in the United States 1957–73

Untitled
2024
mixed media

Courtesy of the artist

Inspired by the distinctive curved shape of the NGV’s Waterwall, Kusama has merged black and pink polka dots to transform the building’s entrance. Like her nearby Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees, 2002/2024, this work is accessible beyond the Gallery. Kusama firmly believes in the inseparability of art and everyday life. These unique public artworks allow passers-by to briefly delve into her wondrous world.

Yayoi Kusama
Japanese born 1929, worked in the United States 1957–73

Narcissus Garden
1966/2024
stainless steel

National Gallery of Victoria
Proposed acquisition, supported by Decjuba Foundation, Shirley Hsieh and Susan Lin, Paula Fox AO & the Fox Family, Jasmine Brunner Bequest, the Neilson Foundation, Gwenneth Nancy Head Foundation, Tim Fairfax AC & Gina Fairfax AC, John Higgins AO & Jodie Maunder, King Family Foundation, the Neumann Auster Family, Chris Thomas AM & Cheryl Thomas, and donors to the 2024 NGV Foundation Annual Dinner and 2024 NGV Annual Appeal, 2024

In 1966 Kusama presented a new artwork at the Venice Biennale. Although not formally invited to participate in that year’s exhibition, she arranged for 1500 mirrored plastic spheres to be installed on the lawn in front of the Italian pavilion. Wearing a gold kimono, Kusama stood among the balls to greet passers-by. A sign stating ‘Your narcissism for sale’ accompanied the performance, and visitors were invited to purchase a shining orb for 1200 lire (about $28 in today’s money). Selling off the work piece by piece at this modest price was a clear critique of elitism and commercialisation within the art world. Although its inaugural display was cut short by the biennale’s authorities, Narcissus Garden has since been restaged around the globe, becoming a hallmark of the artist’s early career.

Yayoi Kusama
Japanese born 1929, worked in the
United States 1957–73

Dancing Pumpkin
2020
bronze, urethane paint

National Gallery of Victoria
Loti & Victor Smorgon Fund, 2025

Since her first interaction with a pumpkin growing on her family’s farm as a young child in Japan, Kusama has been fascinated by its voluminous form and nurturing presence. Over the past eight decades, she has expressed her admiration for the pumpkin across multiple media. Dancing Pumpkin is Kusama’s largest and most ambitious imagining of her beloved pumpkin to date. Whereas her earlier pumpkin sculptures have typically static, solid bases, Dancing Pumpkin has eleven tentacle-like legs. All but three hover above the ground, suggesting joyous movement.

Yayoi Kusama
Japanese born 1929, worked in the
United States 1957–73

Dots Obsession
1996/2024
vinyl balloons

Collection of the artist

Image credits

Yayoi Kusama with a sculpture of herself at the Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama popup store, Tokyo, 2023 © LOUIS VUITTON/Keiichiro Nakajima

Kusama inside The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away at David Zwirner, New York, 2013 © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama wearing clothing of her own design, 2003 © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama at Tokyo Bay, 1993. Photo: © Yuichi Hiruta

Kusama in her Tokyo studio, 1989 © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama with ‘Love Forever’ buttons at the opening of Peep Show/Endless Love Show, Castellane Gallery, New York, 1966. Photo: Hal Reiff

Kusama before departing for the United States, c. 1957 © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama in her studio, New York, c. 1960 © YAYOI KUSAMA

Yayoi Kusama is one of the world’s most celebrated living artists. Her polka-dotted pumpkin and flower sculptures are recognised globally, and her infinity mirror rooms are pivotal to the twenty-first century’s turn towards art as an immersive experience.

Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929, and her personal expression was indelibly shaped by her childhood experiences, including hallucinations that overwhelmed her sense of self. She has explained these visions as part of an obsessional neurosis that has driven her to create art for nearly nine decades.

This exhibition explores Kusama’s unique worldview, starting with artwork created during her childhood and culminating with works made this year. In between, Kusama’s extraordinary career is surveyed, from her experimental years in postwar Japan to her contributions to New York’s avant-garde scene in the 1960s, through to her return to Japan in 1973 and subsequent re-emergence as an artist of international renown.

Although Kusama has experimented with many media and forms of expression, her underlying motivation for making art has remained the same. She seeks to convey the complex beauty of the natural world, and to explore her (and by extension, our) place within an infinitely expanding universe.

Unless otherwise stated, all artworks in the exhibition are by Yayoi Kusama.

Yayoi Kusama aged about ten, c. 1939
© YAYOI KUSAMA

Yayoi Kusama grew up on a plant nursery and seed farm in the regional Japanese city of Matsumoto, where she revelled in the nature surrounding her. At about the age of ten, Kusama started visualising her experiences in drawings, initiating some of her most enduring artistic themes. After briefly studying traditional Japanese painting in Kyoto during the late 1940s, Kusama returned to Matsumoto. She was inspired by international art trends and encouraged to pursue art through her correspondence with the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. During this time, Kusama produced experimental paintings in vast numbers that she exhibited in her home prefecture and Tokyo.

By the mid 1950s Kusama’s ambition had outgrown regional Japan and the possibilities on offer in postwar Tokyo. In November 1957 she left for the United States, with silk kimonos in her bags, American banknotes hidden in her clothing, and some two thousand drawings and paintings. Kusama arrived in Seattle, and within one month she presented her first solo US exhibition at Dusanne Gallery. Six months later, Kusama moved to New York to pursue her dream of international success.

Untitled
1939
pencil on paper

Collection of the artist

This double-sided drawing is one of Kusama’s earliest surviving artworks. On one side, the young artist has sketched a vase holding several flowers, positioned on the edge of a table or shelf. The other side depicts a woman (likely Kusama’s mother, Shigeru) wearing a kimono, her eyes downcast. What unites these drawings is Kusama’s integration of nets and polka dots – the earliest appearance in her work of motifs that would ultimately define her career.

Untitled (Flower Sketches)
c. 1945
pencil and ink on paper (sketchbook)

Collection of the artist

At the age of sixteen, Kusama filled the pages of this small notebook with meticulous drawings of peonies at different phases in their growth cycle. Her knowledge of the peony’s physiology is attributed to her childhood spent surrounded by plants and flowers in the greenhouses and fields of her family’s plant nursery and seed farm. Kusama’s choice to focus on damaged and decayed sections of flowers was perhaps a precursor to her later use of natural forms to allude to the human condition. She likely sketched these flowers towards the end of the Second World War, during a period of considerable hardship in Japan.

Corpses
1950
oil on canvas

Collection of the artist

Japanese art journal Mizue, no. 585, with Kusama’s Flower Bud No. 6, 1952, reproduced on the cover
May 1954

Collection of the artist

Japanese art journal Atelier, no. 314, and a review of Kusama’s 1952 solo exhibition in Matsumoto
1952

Collection of the artist

Exhibition invitation for Yayoi Kusama, Kyuryudo Gallery, Tokyo, 28 March – 2 April 1955
1955

Collection of the artist

Accumulation of the Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization)
1950
oil and enamel on seed sack

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

Kusama created this painting during a period of emotional and psychological upheaval. She was troubled by Japan’s conservative nationalism, memories of the Second World War, and her parents’ opposition to her becoming an artist. These anxieties and feelings of alienation are expressed in this work’s vortex of twisted, rope-like forms. During this time, Kusama studied avant-garde art journals and explored new approaches to painting, using available materials such as sand and seed sacks foraged from her family’s plant nursery. This painting and the nearby Corpses are rare examples of Kusama’s earliest experiments with oil painting.

Clockwise from left:

The Island
1953
charcoal, ink and gouache on paper

Ota Fine Arts

An Animal
1952
gouache, ink and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

Phosphoresce in the Daytime
c. 1950
ink and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

Fern Kingdom
1953
ink and gouache on paper

Private collection

The Fish
1953
ink, gouache and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

In 1952 Kusama premiered a series of works on paper at the First Community Centre in her hometown of Matsumoto. These works were created using various combinations of gouache, ink and pastel. This marked a distinct departure from her previous use of oil paints and work created in the traditional Japanese Nihonga painting style. The quick-drying nature of water-based media encouraged gestural brushwork and spontaneity not permitted by oil paint. This shift in style and technique allowed Kusama to translate her ideas quickly into fluid, organic forms through which she could record her inner feelings.

Clockwise from left:

The Germ
1952
ink and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

A Flower
1952
watercolour and ink on paper

Collection of the artist

Tree
1952
gouache, ink and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

Untitled
1953
ink, gouache and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

Flower
1952
ink and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

For kids

Yayoi Kusama grew up in Japan surrounded by fields of colourful flowers. Her family owned a big seed farm and plant nursery, which sold plants and flowers all around the country. Young Yayoi loved to draw and paint the natural world around her. As you move around this room, can you spot parts of plants? Look out for petals, seed pods, flower stamens and even tree roots.

Letter from Yayoi Kusama to Georgia O’Keeffe
15 November 1955, printed 2024

Courtesy of Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Yayoi Kusama
4 December 1955

Collection of the artist

Untitled
1952
gouache and pastel on paper

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

18D
1956
gouache and pastel on paper

Iwami Art Museum

18L
1957
gouache and pastel on paper

Iwami Art Museum

The Heat
1952
gouache and pastel on paper

Iwami Art Museum

In May 1955 Kusama wrote an essay describing her desire to make art that engages with ‘the tempests, buds, wounds, and genitalia that provoked my anxiety’ and ‘the hidden, shadowy part of life on earth.’ This reflection found expression in a series of watercolours Kusama produced between 1952 and 1957, in which glowing biomorphic and botanical forms filled with dots and daubs of colour emerge from deep, black voids.

Untitled
1956
watercolour on paper

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

Infinity Dots
1953
ink on paper

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Net No. 6
1952
ink on paper

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Arriving in New York in 1958, Kusama visited the Empire State Building and looked down from its observation deck at Manhattan’s busy streets. In that moment she realised that to be recognised in New York, she must do something truly spectacular. Her first impression of the city was of ‘a fierce and violent place’, a ‘living hell’ that was extremely stressful. Despite these conditions, she persevered, determined to make a name for herself in the art world’s centre.

Using a repetitive creative process, Kusama painted large canvases that immerse both artist and viewer in an expansive monochromatic field. From 1963 she extended this interest in self-immersion, or ‘self-obliteration’, into three dimensions. For her Accumulation sculptures, Kusama covered furniture and found objects with phallus-like fabric forms, a style of sculpture that would continue over the coming decades.

In 1965 and 1966 Kusama presented her first infinity mirror rooms at New York’s Castellane Gallery. These installations, which immersed visitors in 360-degree reflections, took Kusama a step closer to realising her ambition of losing herself in endlessly proliferating space.

Photographs of Kusama working on an Infinity Net painting in her New York studio
March 1961

Collection of the artist

Photograph of Kusama standing in front of an Infinity Net painting at Stephen Radich Gallery, New York
May 1961

Collection of the artist

Untitled (Offcut of Infinity Net Painting)
1960
oil on canvas

Collection of the artist

In 1961 Kusama held her second solo exhibition in New York at Stephen Radich Gallery. This presentation featured Kusama’s largest ever canvas, more than ten metres in length. Its monumentality blurred any distinction between the painting and the gallery wall, pre-empting the fully immersive works the artist would soon create.

This Infinity Net painting was so large that it could not be brought into the gallery space until a thirty-centimetre-wide strip was cut from its edge. Although the painting has not survived, this offcut is a testament to the scale of Kusama’s ambition and vision at the time.

Painting Infinity

New York’s art scene in the late 1950s was dominated by the large canvases of Abstract Expressionist painters like Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock. After setting up her New York studio, Kusama began creating her own paintings of considerable scale, a series known as the Infinity Nets.

Working for days on end, Kusama obsessively layered small, looped brushstrokes over large expanses of canvas. While they appear to be purely abstract, a result of the repetitive process of their creation, the paintings also derive inspiration from Kusama’s observations of the natural world, including the white pebbles along the seasonal riverbed near her home in Matsumoto.

No. 10. F.B
1959
pastel and ink on mulberry paper mounted
on card

Ota Fine Arts

The Pacific Ocean
1958
oil on canvas

Ota Fine Arts

This is one of Kusama’s earliest Infinity Net paintings, executed shortly after her arrival in New York. According to the artist, it was inspired by the view of the Pacific Ocean from her airplane window. Across the surface of the canvas, Kusama has applied a soft, semitransparent layer of white paint atop a darker undercoat. While some sections of the painting display defined circular brushstrokes, most are more lightly expressed, creating an irregular, cloud-like effect. This differs from the more consistent application of thicker, looping brushstrokes that extend across the canvases that followed, including the nearby Untitled (No. White A.Z.), 1958–59.

Untitled (No. White A.Z.)
1958–59
oil on canvas

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art

For kids

This huge painting is covered in hundreds of curved brushstrokes. Making these paintings was very tiring. Working all day and into the night, Yayoi used her paintbrush to carefully paint small loops across the surface of her canvas. This painting is a part of a series of works that Yayoi calls her Infinity Nets. Can you see how the pattern she created looks like a net?

One of Yayoi’s Infinity Net paintings was so enormous that a section of the canvas had to be cut off so it could fit through a door! Look around this room for the cut-off part of a painting.

Infinity Nets (2)
1958
oil on canvas

Collection of the artist

Infinity Nets
2000
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Purchased with funds from The Myer Foundation, a project of the Sidney Myer Centenary Celebration 1899–1999, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, 2001

No. N2
1961
oil on canvas

Private collection, courtesy of the Yayoi Kusama Museum

Infinity Nets
1970
oil on canvas

Chiba City Museum of Art

Infinity Net
1965
oil on canvas

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Untitled (Chair)
1963
chair, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Traveling Life
1964
ladder, sewn stuffed fabric, shoes, paint

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

In 1962 Kusama began to cover everyday items with sewn, stuffed fabric forms and paint to create sculptures she called Aggregations or Accumulations. Her desire to make these works arose from what she has described as ‘a deep, driving compulsion to realise in visible form the repetitive image inside of me.’

Kusama describes the fabric forms as ‘phalli’, which she obsessively created as a means of dealing with her fear of sex. Through mass reproduction, the phallus is robbed of its power so that it becomes impotent, even amusing. Paired with overtly domestic items like armchairs, women’s shoes and kitchen utensils, this also connects to Kusama’s experience as a young Japanese woman fighting for her place within the white, maledominated art world of the 1960s.

A Chair
2003
stool, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

Silver Dress
1976
dress, sewn stuffed fabric, hanger, paint

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Untitled (Phallus Bottle)
1963
bottle, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Golden Shoes
1965
shoes, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

One Thousand Boats Show

In 1963, at the Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York, Kusama presented her first room-sized installation. Titled Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, this installation included one of Kusama’s Accumulations, a wooden rowboat with oars covered with her distinctive stuffed fabric shapes and painted white. The room housing the rowboat was papered with repetitive images of the sculpture.

This important early exhibition introduced what would become a signature of Kusama’s artistic practice: the extension of repetitive motifs to create an all-encompassing environment. Kusama took the installation to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1965, after which it entered the museum’s collection. Since then, Kusama has created further iterations of the phallus-covered rowboat in different colours,including the nearby silver work from 1981, Walking on the Sea of Death.

Walking on the Sea of Death
1981
rowing boat, sewn stuffed fabric, found objects, paint

Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
Acquired, 1983

Accumulation of Letters
1961
collage and watercolour on paper

Ota Fine Arts

Airmail Stickers
1962/1992
collage, airmail stickers on canvas

Collection of the artist

In 1961 Kusama began to create two-dimensional collages with inexpensive materials from everyday life. Covering paper and canvas with airmail stickers, fake dollar bills, and fragments of her own name cut from exhibition invitation letters, Kusama meticulously pieced together surfaces marked by repetition.

These dense collages breathed new life into common objects and are evidence of the artist’s resourcefulness in the face of financial insecurity. Known as Accumulation collages, they were precursors to the three-dimensional Aggregation or Accumulation sculptures that Kusama would soon develop.

Untitled
c. 1962–63
collage on paper

Collection of the artist

Self-Obliteration #1
1967
watercolour, pen, pastel and photocollage on paper

Collection of the artist

Self-Obliteration #2
1967
watercolour, pen, pastel and photocollage on paper

Collection of the artist

For kids

Collage is an art technique that involves taking materials like photographs, fabric and paper, sticking them to a surface, and adding your own marks to create something new. When she was a child living in Japan, Yayoi would cut pictures out of magazines. Even after moving to New York as a young woman, she continued to collect materials to make into collages.

In this collage, Yayoi has stuck a photo of herself to a piece of paper and covered it with dots. Look at the tree on the right. Did you notice any dotty trees along the road on your way into the gallery today?

Self-Obliteration #3
1967
watercolour, pen, pastel and photocollage on paper

Collection of the artist

Self-Obliteration #4
1967
watercolour, pen, pastel and photocollage on paper

Collection of the artist

The First Rooms

In the mid 1960s Kusama presented new artwork formats in three significant exhibitions. In Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show at Gertrude Stein Gallery in 1963, Kusama displayed one of her Accumulation sculptures – a rowboat covered in white fabric forms – within a small room papered with images of the boat, using visual repetition to transform the visitor’s encounter with the sculpture.

At Castellane Gallery in 1965, Kusama debuted Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show), a mirrorclad room with a floor of white-and-red polka-dotted fabric forms. On entering the room, visitors saw themselves reflected to infinity within this polka-dotted field of phalli. For her second Castellane exhibition in 1966, she created Peep Show/Endless Love Show, a hexagonal room entirely lined with mirrors, which reflected a repeating pattern created by coloured lightbulbs installed on the ceiling. Unable to physically enter this room, visitors instead peered into its technicolour universe through two peepholes.

With their ingenious use of space and materials, in particular lights and mirrors, and a strategy of repetition, these three rooms took Kusama closer to expressing her vision of an infinite universe.

Footage of Kusama on the Belgian TV program Metamorphoses: L’école de New York
17 February 1965
3 min 7 sec
Director: Jean Antoine

Courtesy of Sonuma-RTBF archive images

Footage of Kusama on the German TV program Hier und Heute, Kulturspiegel
3 May 1966
2 min 31 sec

Courtesy of WDR mediagroup GmbH

Footage of Kusama in her New York studio
c. 1965
4 min 56 sec
Director and videographer: John Jones

Tate Library & Archive

Image credits for screen at far-right

Yayoi Kusama, Untitled, 1963, photocollage
© YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama with sculptures in her New York studio, 1963–64. Photo: Lock Huey

Installation views of Infinity Mirror Room— Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show), 1965, Castellane Gallery, New York
© YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama with ‘Love Forever’ buttons at the opening of Peep Show/Endless Love Show, Castellane Gallery, New York, 1966. Photo: Hal Reiff

Kusama peering into Peep Show/Endless Love Show, 1966 © Northwestern University. Photo: Peter Moore

Exhibition poster for Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York, 17 December 1963 – 11 January 1964
1963

Collection of the artist

Photograph of Kusama in Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York
1963
Photographer: Rudy Burckhardt

Collection of the artist

Exhibition poster for Floor Show, Castellane Gallery, New York, 3–27 November 1965
1965

Collection of the artist

Diazotype plans for Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show), 1965
3 October 1965
Architect: Alan Buchsbaum

Collection of the artist

Contact sheet showing photographs of Kusama with components of Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show), 1965
c. 1966
Photographer: Eikoh Hosoe

Collection of the artist

Sketch for Love Forever by Kusama, created for the unrealised exhibition Zero op Zee (Zero on Sea), The Hague
1966

Collection of the artist

Photographs of Kusama lying in Peep Show/Endless Love Show, 1966, Castellane Gallery, New York
1966

Collection of the artist

Untitled photocollage showing Kusama peering into Peep Show/Endless Love Show, 1966
date unknown
Photographer: Hal Reiff

Collection of the artist

Narcissus Garden
1966/2024
stainless steel

National Gallery of Victoria
Proposed acquisition, supported by Decjuba Foundation, Shirley Hsieh and Susan Lin, Paula Fox AO & the Fox Family, Jasmine Brunner Bequest, the Neilson Foundation, Gwenneth Nancy Head Foundation, Tim Fairfax AC & Gina Fairfax AC, John Higgins AO & Jodie Maunder, King Family Foundation, the Neumann Auster Family, Chris Thomas AM & Cheryl Thomas, and donors to the 2024 NGV Foundation Annual Dinner and 2024 NGV Annual Appeal, 2024

In 1966 Kusama presented a new artwork at the Venice Biennale. Although not formally invited to participate in that year’s exhibition, she arranged for 1500 mirrored plastic spheres to be installed on the lawn in front of the Italian pavilion. Wearing a gold kimono, Kusama stood among the balls to greet passers-by. A sign stating ‘Your narcissism for sale’ accompanied the performance, and visitors were invited to purchase a shining orb for 1200 lire (about $28 in today’s money). Selling off the work piece by piece at this modest price was a clear critique of elitism and commercialisation within the art world. Although its inaugural display was cut short by the biennale’s authorities, Narcissus Garden has since been restaged around the globe, becoming a hallmark of the artist’s early career.

Footage of Kusama on the German TV program Kunst ’66 – Hinweise, Ansichten und Tendenzen
31 October 1966
37 sec

Courtesy of Hessischer Rundfunk

Kusama’s work undertook a major shift in the second half of the 1960s. Between 1967 and 1969 she presented roughly seventy-five ‘happenings’ – socially and politically charged events linked to the broader countercultural movements of the period, including sexual liberation and anti–Vietnam War protests. Most of Kusama’s happenings took place at prominent public locations throughout New York, including Central Park, Trinity Church and the Brooklyn Bridge. Participants in these public interventions were often naked, and Kusama – the self-professed ‘High Priestess of Polka Dots’ – would use her paintbrush to ‘obliterate’ their bodies with polka dots.

Kusama carefully documented this experimental period in her career. Happenings, film screenings and other ephemeral events were announced with press releases and captured in photographs. Her fashion designs of the period were similarly recorded in photo shoots, and advertisements for her fashions were published in men’s magazines. These documents form an important part of the artist’s personal archive.

Walking Piece
c. 1966
performance documented with 24 colour slides
Photographer: Eikoh Hosoe

Collection of the artist

Walking Piece marks a shift in Kusama’s practice from sculpture and installation to performance. In each of the twenty-four slides that constitute this artwork, Kusama roams the streets of downtown Manhattan in a pink kimono, holding an umbrella adorned with artificial flowers. Her attire and plaited hair set her apart from the plainly dressed passers-by, and assert her outsider identity as a Japanese woman in the United States. Captured using a fish-eye lens by her collaborator, Japanese photographer and filmmaker Eikoh Hosoe, these images evoke a sense of unease and estrangement through their distorted perspective.

For kids

Have you ever felt different from other people? Around eight years after she moved from Japan to the United States, Yayoi made this performance artwork about feeling like an outsider in New York City. In the performance, Yayoi wandered around New York wearing a bright pink kimono and carrying an umbrella covered in plastic flowers. She really stood out in her colourful outfit!

Performance art usually involves an artist using their own body or working with other people to create a set of actions or movements. Sometimes they wear costumes. We remember Walking Piece because it was recorded in photographs.

View captions for the archival materials display

Kusama regularly wore outfits of her own design, including the nearby pink-and-white tunic dress, during the many happenings and photo shoots she staged in the late 1960s. Beyond her personal wardrobe, Kusama crafted radical garments that aligned with the spirit of the sexual liberation movement. Some designs featured her handpainted net motif while others had strategically placed holes that revealed parts of the wearer’s naked body.

To extend the reach of her fashion designs beyond the art world and make them commercially viable, she established Kusama Fashion Company in 1969. The same year, she launched a ready-to-wear collection. With garments that ranged from relatively conventional styles to radical designs, Kusama’s clothes were stocked by retailers in New York and sold at her own boutique on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Eighth Street.

Untitled (Dress)
c. 1968
dress, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Kusama wore this pink tunic dress in several photo shoots and happenings she staged in the late 1960s. Hand-painted by the artist and covered with dense groups of the soft fabric forms that characterise her Accumulations, this dress represents the broadening of Kusama’s practice to include fashion, performance and other less conventional artistic media. During this period, Kusama would continue to extend the reach of her fashion designs by launching a boutique and ready-to-wear collection of experimental designs, examples of which are displayed nearby.

Kusama wearing Untitled (Dress), c. 1968, with small Accumulation objects at her feet and a banner in the background, 1971. Photo: Thomas Haar

Untitled (Bowl)
c. 1968
bowl, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Untitled (Shoe)
c. 1968
shoe, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Untitled (Vanity Case)
c. 1968
vanity case, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Untitled (Shoe)
c. 1968
shoe, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Untitled (Shoe)
c. 1968
shoe, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Untitled (Tray)
c. 1968
tray, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Untitled (Turner)
c. 1968
turner, sewn stuffed fabric, paint

Collection of the artist

Avantgarde Fashion N
1968/1998
paint on cotton

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion L
1968/1998
paint on cotton

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion B
1968/1998
paint on velvet

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion I
1968/1998
paint on cotton

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion J
1968/1998
paint on cotton

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion K
1968/1998
paint on cotton

Iwami Art Museum

Orgy Dress
2002
cotton

Collection of the artist

Kusama designed her first Orgy and See Through dresses in 1968. These large, sack-like garments were covered in circular cut-outs, exposing parts of the wearer’s naked body. Each dress could accommodate several bodies, encouraging intimate contact. In a 1969 media release, Kusama declared her experimental fashions to be a part of the ‘Holy War against the establishment.’ The radical nature of Kusama’s designs contributed to, and were informed by, the 1960s counterculture movement of sexual liberation.

Avantgarde Fashion F
1968/1998
satin

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion H
1968/1998
synthetic fabric

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion C
1968/1998
synthetic fabric

Iwami Art Museum

Avantgarde Fashion G
1968/1998
synthetic fabric

Iwami Art Museum

Matahari
1970
oil on canvas with wire mesh on wooden frame

Chiba City Museum of Art

Danny La Rue (Caged)
1970
oil on canvas with wire mesh on wooden frame

Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

These ‘cage’ portraits are unique within Kusama’s artistic practice of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which otherwise centred on performance, activism and fashion design. The paintings are part of a series of portraits depicting famous female figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Mata Hari, Sharon Tate, Jacqueline Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and the drag performer Danny La Rue. Kusama’s choice to depict these figures under constrictive wire netting might suggest a desire to understand the complex experience of celebrity. In the late 1960s, the artist’s protests and happenings had become tabloid fodder in the United States and Japan, drawing criticism for their provocative nature.

Marilyn Monroe
1970
oil on canvas with wire mesh on wooden frame

Chiba City Museum of Art

Kusama’s Self-Obliteration
1967
16mm colour film with sound transferred to digital video, 23 min 33 sec
Cinematographer: Jud Yalkut

Collection of the artist

The concept of self-obliteration stems from hallucinations Kusama has experienced since she was a child, in which her body and surroundings are enveloped by nets, dots and other repetitive motifs. Connected to these formative experiences, self obliteration is the process by which the self is metaphorically fragmented into its environment and the cosmos. This concept finds expression in many of her works, including Kusama’s Self-Obliteration. Throughout this experimental film, we follow Kusama on a psychedelic journey, from a field in which she applies polka dots to a horse, to a body-painting orgy inside her 1966 infinity mirror room Peep Show/Endless Love Show.

In 1973 Kusama moved back to Japan after nearly sixteen years living in the United States. Around this time, she experienced the death of several significant people in her life, including her father in 1974. A period of introspection and psychological breakdowns followed, leading Kusama to choose, in 1977, to live with regular access to psychiatric care. She eventually established a separate studio, but for a time her working space was limited, so she began to create small-scale collages. These detailed and intimate works combine cut-out photographs and illustrations, often with insect, marine or botanical motifs and her characteristic drawn and painted nets, webs and dots.

Man Catching the Insect
1972
collage and oil on paper

Collection of the artist

Self-Portrait
1972
collage, pastel, ballpoint pen and ink on paper

Collection of the artist

Flowers and Self-Portrait
1973
collage, watercolour, ink and pastel on paper

Ota Fine Arts

Hat
1975
collage, watercolour and pastel on paper

Iwami Art Museum

A Shoe Wearing in My Memories
1975
collage, watercolour and pastel on paper

Collection of the artist

Soaring into Space
1975
collage, watercolour and ink on paper

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Woman with a Shadow of a Bird
1978
collage and synthetic polymer paint on paper

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

For kids

Look closely at this picture, called Woman with a Shadow of a Bird. Can you find the bird? This picture of a woman’s face is made using photographs. Yayoi has painted eyes and a mouth over the top.

Many of Yayoi’s artworks are about becoming part of the space around you. Part of this interest comes from hallucinations she has had since she was a child. In one hallucination, Yayoi remembers seeing red flowers multiply to cover her entire body and the room she stood in.

Ceremony for Suicide
1975–76
sewn stuffed fabric, clothes, hangers, furniture, found objects, paint

Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

Invisible Life
2000/2024
convex mirrors mounted on walls, paint

Collection of the artist

Statue of Venus Obliterated by Infinity Nets 2/10
1998
synthetic polymer paint on canvas and fibre-reinforced plastic

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

Kusama first saw a pumpkin as a primary-school student while visiting a seed-harvesting nursery with her grandfather. Among yellow flowering vines, she discovered a pumpkin the size of a man’s head and, as she went to pluck it, it began to speak to her in an animated manner. Enchanted by its charming nature, the young Kusama adopted the pumpkin as a recurring motif in her art.

Kusama created her first pumpkin painting as a teenager in 1946. She likened the ritual of painting pumpkins to Zen meditation: ‘I would confront the spirit of the pumpkin, forgetting everything else, and concentrate my mind entirely on the form before me.’

In the late 1970s Kusama returned to one of the most nurturing and wondrous life forms of her childhood. Initially painting yellow-and-black or black-and-white dotted pumpkins, she has seamlessly transformed the image of the pumpkin into sculptures, infinity mirror rooms and a multitude of commercial products, elevating it to one of the most recognised icons of contemporary art worldwide.

Pumpkin
1979
fibre-tipped pen and watercolour on paper

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

Pumpkin
1981
synthetic polymer paint and fabric on canvas

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

For kids

Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins! Pumpkins appear a lot in Yayoi’s artworks. She first encountered them as a child on her family’s farm and has loved them ever since. To her, they seem gentle, cheerful and friendly. They remind her of happy childhood memories. Yayoi has made many colourful paintings, prints and sculptures of pumpkins. Short or tall, wide or thin, she loves to paint their bumpy, curvy shapes.

Yayoi has brought together her favourite things in this painting: nets, polka dots and pumpkins. With Yayoi’s love of pumpkins in mind, can you guess what’s waiting for you in the next room?

Pumpkin
2024
fibre-reinforced plastic, urethane paint, stainless steel

Collection of the artist

The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens

In 1991 Kusama created Mirror Room (Pumpkin), her first immersive mirror room in over two decades. Exhibited at the 1993 Venice Biennale, a mysterious cube sat at the centre of a yellow-and-black polkadotted room. Visitors were invited to look through a small opening in the cube’s exterior to see the scene hidden within: a fantastical mirrored landscape of pumpkin sculptures. The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens is a reprisal of this early pumpkin room. Inside the cube, the original handpainted pumpkins have been replaced by glowing pumpkin lanterns.

The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens
2015
mixed media

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased with the assistance of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett, 2018

Pumpkin
2024
fibre-reinforced plastic, urethane paint, stainless steel

Collection of the artist

Pumpkin
1991
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Collection of the artist

Pumpkin (D)
1992
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Collection of the artist

In 1973 Kusama returned permanently to Japan where, after some years of isolation and introversion, she began to exhibit again. She was represented in a major survey of contemporary Japanese art in 1981 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, cementing her place within the national art scene. It was not long until Kusama returned to the world stage. In 1989 her first international retrospective exhibition was staged at the Center for International Contemporary Arts in New York, and in 1993 she was the first solo contemporary artist to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale.

In work produced during these final decades of the twentieth century, Kusama simultaneously looks back at the past and towards the future. Her soft botanical sculptures and repetitive multi-panel paintings recall her Accumulations and Infinity Nets of the 1950s and 1960s, while also broadening her artistic exploration of natural and cosmic worlds. Kusama’s expanded vision was realised anew in Dots Obsession, 1996, an environment populated with polka-dotted inflatables. This work has since been realised in many variations, incorporating mirrors since 1998. This marked an evolution in the artist’s groundbreaking infinity mirror rooms of the 1960s.

Left to right:

First Act at Ocean’s Bottom
1994
collage, synthetic polymer paint, mesh, wood, fabric

Collection of the artist

Sea (B)
1985
sewn stuffed fabric, wood, paint

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Winter (B)
1985
sewn stuffed fabric, wood, paint

Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu

Curtain Rising
1994
collage, synthetic polymer paint, paper, sewn stuffed fabric, mesh, wood, fabric

Collection of the artist

Flower
1985
sewn stuffed fabric, wood, synthetic fibre, paint

Ota Fine Arts

Dream of the Sea
1994
collage, synthetic polymer paint, mesh, wood, fabric

Collection of the artist

Soul Burning Flashes (A.B.Q)
1988
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Collection of the artist

Towards the end of the 1980s, Kusama produced a series of multi-panel paintings. In these monumental works, she references the endlessness of nature and the cosmos by using repetitive all-over motifs. Soul Burning Flashes (A.B.Q) comprises four panels, each teeming with life. A profusion of dots with tiny tails evokes tadpoles wriggling in a pond, or sperm viewed through a microscope. As in Kusama’s earlier Infinity Net paintings, the energy of this motif appears on the verge of breaking free from the canvas’s edges to proliferate throughout the universe.

Black Flower
1986
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic fibre, metal, synthetic polymer paint

Ota Fine Arts

In 1986 Kusama had a solo exhibition at Fuji Television Gallery in Tokyo that featured recent flower sculptures, including the double-headed Black Flower. In a catalogue essay for the exhibition, art critic Toshiaki Minemura described Kusama’s interest in the infinite as a ‘cosmological study’ – an investigation of our place in the universe. This line of inquiry is present in Black Flower. The dotted phallic forms covering this sculpture resemble reproductive organs and other twisting and irregular bodily shapes. In full bloom, yet coloured black and white, this sculpture evokes the cycle of life – birth, growth, decay and rebirth.

Flower
1986
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic polymer paint, metal

Collection of the artist

For kids

Think back to the beginning of this exhibition. Do you remember seeing sketches and paintings of flowers and plants? Yayoi never lost her childhood fascination with nature. After spending many years in America, Yayoi went back to live in Japan. She reconnected with her hometown and the natural landscapes around it. She created soft sculptures that look like plants and flowers in different stages of growth. Yayoi likes to think about the ideas of life and death by observing the life cycles of other living things.

Genesis
1992–93
sewn stuffed fabric, wood, paint

Iwami Art Museum

Genesis is one of several large sculptural installations Kusama created between 1976 and 1994 in which wooden boxes, each filled with stuffed fabric forms and painted silver, are stacked to make a grid. These works are an extension of her earlier Accumulation sculptures; however, in Genesis, the soft phallic shapes are replaced by elongated and intertwined biomorphic forms resembling vines, roots and even bodily organs. Each box in Genesis is not only a container suggesting stifling confinement, but also has a generative quality, like cells that divide and multiply to produce a vast web or nexus. The work’s title speaks directly to this process of creation.

Flowers of Basara performance, Kuhonbutsu Jōshin-ji temple, Tokyo
1985
digital video, colour, silent, 1 min 20 sec
Videographer: Teshigahara Productions

Collection of the artist

In April 1985 Kusama staged a performance in the cherry tree grove at Kuhonbutsu Jōshin-ji, a Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Commissioned by a professor at Tokyo University, the performance was titled Basara no Hana (Flowers of Extravagance) in reference to the extravagance of the fourteenth-century lord Dōyo Sasaki. He was said to have held a lavish celebration of cherry blossoms near Kyoto that lasted twenty days. For the performance, Kusama encircled the flowering trees with red and white streamers, connecting them in a ‘net’. It was her first public outdoor performance in over a decade.

Dots Obsession

Kusama premiered Dots Obsession – her first walkthrough room featuring inflated forms – in 1996. This new format extended Kusama’s ongoing preoccupation with dots by inviting visitors into an all-encompassing art environment. For Kusama, dots symbolise both the individual and, when presented in great numbers, the cosmos. This dual meaning suggests that all things are interconnected, with Kusama’s visualisation of infinite dots signifying her ongoing pursuit of ‘self-obliteration’. Upon entering Dots Obsession, with its proliferation of mirrors and polka dots creating the illusion of endlessness, visitors are invited to contemplate their place within the universe.

Dots Obsession
1996/2024
stickers, vinyl balloons, mirror

Collection of the artist

Imagery of Human Beings
1987
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

Sex Obsession
1992
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Collection of Lito and Kim Camacho

Pollen
1986
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic fibre, synthetic polymer paint, metal

Ota Fine Arts

Revelation from Heaven
1989
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

The Galaxy
1991
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Chiba City Museum of Art

For kids

When you look up at the night sky, what do you imagine might be out there? Over time, Yayoi has grown more and more fascinated by the universe and its vastness. This big painting, and many nearby, are all about life on earth, the universe, and what lies beyond. Notice the circles expanding across the surface of the painting. For Yayoi, dots symbolise our connection with everything around us. She once said: ‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos.’

Revived Soul
1995
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

Kusama was commissioned to paint Revived Soul in commemoration of the victims of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The triptych’s title alludes to the remembrance of the souls of the deceased in the hearts of those still living. Often read as a forest of dead trees, the vertical, trunklike forms that cover the surface of the work are formed by an alternating density of white dots ringed by black paint. In Kusama’s visual language, gathered dots express the endlessness of the universe. The repetitive visual patterns of her multipanel paintings of this period offer a view towards the cosmos beyond.

Since 2000 Yayoi Kusama has become one of the world’s most recognised artists. From major international survey exhibitions and monumental sculptures installed in public spaces to widespread recognition of her signature motifs and striking visual identity (most notably, her red wig), Kusama has become a key figure in popular culture. In 2016 she was named one of Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the world.

In the twenty-first century, Kusama’s rise has been amplified by the power of social media. Images of the artist’s infinity mirror rooms and collaborations with luxury brands like Louis Vuitton have introduced an audience of many millions to her art.

Despite her larger-than-life status, Kusama remains committed to making art that is deeply personal. Whether in poetry, paintings or large site-specific installations or infinity mirror rooms, Kusama expresses reasons for hope in the face of existential finitude. Her creativity is her lifeline.

Flowers That Bloom at Midnight
2011
fibre-reinforced plastic, urethane paint, metal

Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Purchased with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, 2012

Kusama has long been interested in flowers and their life cycles. Since her teenage years in Matsumoto, the flower has remained an important motif in her visual language. Flowers That Bloom at Midnight is part of a series of sculptures the artist began in 2009. Like the exotic blooms that give this specimen – and the series – its title, these cartoon-like flowers seem to come from a parallel universe. Their fantastical forms, polkadotted planes and exuberant colours create a garden of unearthly delights representative of the joyous optimism unique to Kusama’s recent practice.

Works from the Love Forever series 2004–07
screenprint on canvas

Collection of the artist

Kusama has produced three major painting series in the twenty-first century. The first is Love Forever, fifty line drawings originally made with marker pen on canvas and subsequently reproduced as screenprints. The series’ title reprises Kusama’s catchcry – her own version of the countercultural slogan ‘Make Love, Not War’ – which she printed on buttons and distributed at the opening of her Castellane Gallery exhibition in 1966. In this series, however, Kusama’s imagery is far from the world of happenings, activism and anti-war protests that dominated her 1960s practice in New York. Using a marker pen, she gradually filled the empty picture plane with wondrous imagery inspired by childhood memories and emotions.

Arrival of Spring [QA.B.Z]
2005

Women in a Dream [TWZSA]
2005

Guidepost to Youth [HOTWOX]
2007

Days of Youth [YOZMTO]
2007

Flower Petals [AWSHTS]
2005

Waves at Daybreak
2006

Birth, Aging, Sickness and Death [QXPAT]
2007

Lips Floating in the Waves [TOWHC]
2005

Morning Waves [TEXHT]
2005

Midnight Sleep [OPESSA]
2005

Morning Splendour [TWHIOW]
2007

Love Forever [TAOW]
2004

Awakening of Spring [TWSHON]
2005

Women’s New York [SSAAWA]
2007

Sprouting [TOXZS]
2006

Works from the My Eternal Soul series 2009–21
synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Collection of the artist

In 2009 Kusama commenced a series of paintings titled My Eternal Soul, vowing to create one hundred paintings over eighteen months. She finally completed the series in 2021, having painted close to nine hundred canvases. As in the Love Forever series, Kusama did not pre-plan each work’s composition. She started by painting each canvas in a bold hue, then added biomorphic imagery that recalls the organic forms in some of her earliest works on paper. Painting while seated at a table, she improvised, rotating each canvas to cover its surface with abstract, botanical and figurative forms.

For kids

Whoa! This room is full of paintings and colourful sculptures. See if you can spot these symbols: faces, lips, eyes, spiky eyelashes, leaves, flower stamens, fish and funny little people.

What else can you see? Do any of the sculptures share the same shape as symbols in the paintings?

The Place for God
2012

Love That Was Lost
2017

Under the Sky of Happiness
2013

Billions of Eyes
2013

I Want to Speak All About the Love of Humanity
2018

Millions of Sparkles of Love
2014

Pain of Love Lost, and a Wish to Commit Suicide
2009

Eternal Death
2014

I Want to Go Back to My Hometown
2016

Festival in the Sky
2016

Festival of Life
2017

A Word Called Happiness
2016

I Love-Eyes
2013

Give Me Love
2015

River in the Moonlit Night
2010

Adoration for Eternal Space
2018

Quiet Silence of Death
2014

Memories
2013

Window of Youth
2016

Eyes of Mine
2010

The Urge to Die Comes on a Daily Basis. Hoping That You Come Across My Death
2014

I Want to Go to the Universe
2013

The People I Love
2014

Billions of Sparkles of Love Fade Away in the Silence of Death Like a Gust of Wind
2017

Let’s Exclaim the Youth
2018

Human Behaviour
2013

Here, Another Night Comes from Trillions of Light Years Away
2017

Dear Death of Mine, Thou Shalt Welcome an Eternal Death
2017

My Adolescence in Bloom
2014
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic polymer paint, metal

Collection of the artist

Surrounded by Heartbeats
2014
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic polymer paint, metal
Collection of the artist

Welcoming the Joyful Season
2014
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic polymer paint, metal

Collection of the artist

All About My Flowering Heart
2015
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic polymer paint, metal

Collection of the artist

Unfolding Buds
2015
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic polymer paint, metal

Collection of the artist

Youth Does Not Go Away
2016
sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic polymer paint, metal

Collection of the artist

In the early 2000s Kusama began to produce darkened celestial mirror rooms. Varying in terms of their size and contents, these rooms are united by the use of a light source replicated endlessly with mirrors. Chandelier of Grief features a single baroque-style chandelier suspended inside a glass prism in the centre of a mirror-clad hexagonal room. The chandelier rotates slowly, its flickering light reflecting in every direction, creating the illusion of endless chandeliers. The viewer’s body is similarly multiplied into a dark and distant void. This disorienting experience – witnessing a seemingly infinite world within a confined space – connects to Kusama’s desire for us to consider our place within the universe.

Chandelier of Grief
2016
chandelier, steel, aluminium, mirror, acrylic, motor, plastic, lighting element

Collection of the artist

Ladder to Heaven
2019
fibreglass tube, light source, mirror, stainless steel

Collection of the artist

Tender are the Stairs to Heaven
2004
synthetic polymer resin mirror, plywood, painted plywood, fibre optic cable, transformer, metal chain, aluminium

National Gallery of Victoria
Purchased, NGV Contemporary with the assistance of Joan and Peter Clemenger AM, 2007

For kids

Look up. Now look down. Does the ladder look like it’s going on forever?

For sixty years, Yayoi has cleverly used mirrors to create the illusion of endlessness. Her mirror rooms are wondrous worlds. Like her mirror rooms, this artwork is a portal to another place. Can you remember the white ladder near the beginning of the exhibition? (Hint: It was covered in small fabric shapes.) By now you might have noticed that Yayoi likes to revisit the same objects and symbols over many years. In her work, nearly everything is connected. It’s like solving a puzzle!

The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe

In a 1968 interview, Kusama spoke of her interest in the infinite quality of nature. She described this as ‘a mysterious energy or feeling in the infinity’ that ‘comes up growing and growing, never stops’. This description comes to life in this immersive environment in which visitors move through a forest of yellow-and-black polka-dotted forms.

Throughout her career, and across virtually all media, Kusama has referenced, repeated and re-imagined structures and cycles found in nature. This allencompassing artwork, in which six-metre-tall tendrils appear to writhe and intersect overhead, serves as a reminder of the artist’s enduring affinity with and respect for the natural world.

The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe
2019
vinyl inflatables, plywood, fans

Collection of the artist

For kids

You are about to step inside a giant forest! In this next room you will walk among twisting forms that look like enormous trees. Yayoi is inspired by patterns in nature. Her artworks have been described as ‘biomorphic’. This means having shapes that look like parts of living things, such as plants or the human body.

Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict

The concept of ‘self-obliteration’ – the fragmentation and destruction of the self in order to return to the universe – underlies much of Kusama’s art and writing. In 1978 Kusama wrote Manhattan Suicide Addict, a semiautobiographical novel that revisits the harsh conditions she experienced living and working in New York, and the toll this period took on her mental health. Referencing the book’s title, Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict shows Kusama reciting a poem about life, death, heaven and the eternal. She stands against a background of her immersive environments and paintings. Mirrors positioned on either side of the projection endlessly extend the artist’s image and song – replicating and obliterating her into infinity.

Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict
2010
mirrors, video projection, colour, sound,
1 min 17 sec

Collection of the artist

With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever
2013
fibre-reinforced plastic, urethane paint, metal, stickers

Collection of the artist

Love is Calling

This work is a landscape of inflated, polka-dotted tentacular forms extending from the floor and the ceiling. These irregular snaking shapes are illuminated and gradually change colour. The walls are clad with mirrors, reflecting this fantastical landscape into infinity. The artist’s voice can be heard reciting her poem ‘Residing in a Castle of Shed Tears’. Written in 2010, the poem poignantly expresses Kusama’s desire to spread a universal message of love. An English translation can be read on the screen nearby.

Love is Calling
2013
wood, metal, mirror, tile, acrylic panel, rubber, fans, lighting element, speakers, sound

Collection of the artist

For kids

This room is like a night-time version of a room you saw earlier in the exhibition. It is dark and there are many mirrors. Watch out for the tentacles coming down from the ceiling! If you listen closely, you will hear Yayoi reading a poem in Japanese. Poetry is important to Yayoi. She has written many poems and novels. Sometimes the titles of her artworks are also poems. You will see some of her poems painted on canvases right before you leave this exhibition.

In 2002 Kusama published her autobiography, in which she wrote:

What I think about first and foremost is that I want to create good art. That is my sole desire. It would be futile and meaningless to focus on the shrinking timeframe before me, or to think of my limitations. I shall never stop striving to create works that will shine on after my death. There are nights when I cannot sleep simply because my heart is bursting with the aspiration to make art that will live forever.

Kusama’s vision continues to expand, whether painting in solitude or developing new work, site-specific installations and mirror rooms.

A new infinity mirror room is presented here for the first time alongside a selection of recent paintings created since 2021. During this time, Kusama’s mobility has decreased and her living space has become her working space. Consequently, the size of her canvases has reduced. These paintings are filled with imagery drawn from nature and childhood memories, as well as other ideas that have preoccupied the artist since her earliest years in Matsumoto. Kusama’s ongoing, prolific output is a testament to her undiminished drive to create art.

Footage from Yayoi Kusama: Let’s Fight Together, 2015 © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk

Works from the Every Day I Pray for Love series 2021–

Collection of the artist

Every Day I Pray for Love is the third major painting series undertaken by Kusama in the twenty-first century. As in the previous series (Love Forever and My Eternal Soul), Kusama works intuitively to cover the surface of each canvas with repetitive patterns of nets, polka dots and other signature motifs.

Kusama has also integrated new visual devices into these paintings, including text in both Japanese and English. These sentences express optimistic and existential thoughts that demonstrate the consistency of Kusama’s artistic vision. Text is also increasingly important in the titling of individual paintings, some with entire poems serving as a pendant to the image.

View artwork details

Infinity Mirrored Room— My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light
2024
wood, metal, mirror, tile, acrylic panel, rubber, lighting element, stainless steel

Collection of the artist

Yayoi Kusama. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: Yusuke Miyazaki

Flower Obsession

From a young age, Kusama experienced hallucinations. This formative experience was later described by the artist:

One day, after gazing at a pattern of red flowers on the tablecloth, I looked up to see that the ceiling, the windows, and the columns seemed to be plastered with the same red floral pattern. I saw the entire room, my entire body, and the entire universe covered with red flowers, and in that instant my soul was obliterated.

Flower Obsession begins as a furnished domestic space, much like a normal apartment. Visitors are invited to apply red flowers to the walls, furniture and objects. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the flowers will proliferate, gradually covering all surfaces to ‘obliterate’ and transform the space into a spectacular environment.

Flower Obsession
2017
flower decals, fabric flowers, furniture, found objects

National Gallery of Victoria
Purchased, NGV Women’s Association, 2018