Yayoi Kusama – Selfies, Visions & Beyond

Yayoi Kusama is a SUPERSTAR in the art world and a pop culture icon. Photos of her works are literally posted everywhere on social media and everyone has selfies in the room installations. Her works are always graphically and visually engaging. I first saw some her works a few years ago at The Broad and was ecstatic when I was lucky enough to get tickets to her 50-year retrospective Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC in 2017. This exhibition had six of her Infinity Mirror Rooms alongside a selection of her other key works. The show ended up touring throughout North America and just ended on Feb 17, 2019 at the High Museum of Art.

Since her room installations are so popular, there were time restrictions in all of the rooms at the Hirshhorn. I definitely took my share of pictures in the rooms but I opted to leave my phone in my pocket and simply enjoy certain room installations. While waiting in lines to enter the exhibits, I read more about her early life and started seeing more of her history in her works.

“A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement ... Polka dots are a way to infinity.”

—Yayoi Kusuma, in Manhattan Suicide Addict

Yayoi Kusama had a dysfunctional childhood with a physically abusive mother and womanizing father. Her mother would send her to spy on her father’s affairs and this instilled within her a lifelong contempt for sexuality, particularly the male body. At 10 years old she also started experiencing vivid hallucinations. Kusama checked herself into the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill in 1977 and has been living at the hospital since by choice. – Shoutout to Wikipedia for all this info.

The nonconformity and phallic nature of her sculptures made more sense. The crazy bursts of lights in her installations and all encompassing pieces that overfill off the canvas and throughout a room made sense. End of the day, her works have a message that maybe none of us will fully ever understand but are non traditionally beautiful and simply great. Even with the long lines for all the room installations at this show, I loved every piece and am on a mission to see whatever shows of her I can possibly travel to.