Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), a Japanese artist of global renown, has had a profound influence on both pop art and minimalism while forging her own path as a boundary-pushing avant-garde creator. Spanning seven decades, her multifaceted career encompasses painting, sculpture, performance art, installation, literature, film, fashion and design. Her works often explore themes of psychology, obsession, infinity, feminism and her personal experiences with mental illness, including vivid hallucinatory visions of dots and patterns that have informed her iconic motifs.
Born in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama began painting at age 10 and rose to prominence in the 1960s in New York City, where she staged provocative happenings and exhibited alongside leading figures like Andy Warhol. Her signature "Infinity Nets" series of intricate, repetitive patterns and immersive "Infinity Mirror Rooms" reflect her fascination with boundlessness and repetition. Kusama’s early activism included anti-Vietnam War protests and challenges to institutional hierarchies, resonating with the cultural turbulence of the era.
After returning to Japan in the 1970s, Kusama continued her artistic explorations while living voluntarily in a psychiatric hospital. Her reputation resurged internationally in the 1990s, culminating in major retrospectives and installations worldwide, including the Venice Biennale (1993), the Hirshhorn Museum’s Infinity Mirrors (2017-2019), and her dedicated Tokyo museum (opened in 2017). Recent accolades include permanent public artworks, such as a mosaic in New York’s Grand Central Station (2023).
 
Kusama’s work resides at the intersection of abstraction and representation, combining her unique vision with universal themes. Her installations, particularly the immersive Infinity Rooms, allow viewers to enter her world and experience her reflections on infinity and the cosmos. Today, she remains one of the most celebrated and influential artists of our time, her work housed in major museums worldwide.