Gallery 301. Yayoi Kusama

Infinity Mirrored Room – A Wish for Human Happiness Calling from Beyond the Universe (2020), by Yayoi Kusama, demonstrates the unique vision of the globally renowned Japanese artist. Kusama is a pioneer in contemporary art who envisages art as a means of social change. To this end, she writes texts and makes paintings, drawings, sculptures, performances, and immersive installations, the Infinity Mirror Rooms.

The artist’s signature motifs of natural forms and polka-dots began to characterize her work from an early age as a result of the hallucinations she suffered. Patterns and repetitions of such forms found expression in her Infinity Nets, a body of work that that she began making when she moved to New York in 1957 that includes paintings, soft sculptures, collages, films, and installations. The large monochromatic paintings from this series gradually moved beyond canvas to walls, and then to entire rooms from floor to ceiling, reflecting the artist’s experience during a hallucination. The Infinity Nets won the attention of the New York avant-garde. Nevertheless, the lack of official recognition of her work in a male-dominated art scene led her to a profound crisis that resulted in her return to Japan in 1973. There she chose to exile herself from the public sphere in order to continue working, focusing on art as therapy. It was not until the late 1980s that her work started to be publicly exhibited, which served as a great stimulus for new creations and international recognition.