Yayoi Kusama is one of Japan’s leading contemporary artists. She is known for her Instagrammable “infinity rooms” – immersive installations that use mirrors, lights and reflective surfaces to create the illusion of endless space – as well as her large-scale polka dot sculptures. While her works often appear playful, behind them lies the story of a woman who has faced major social and mental health challenges.
At around the age of 10, Yayoi Kusama began experiencing hallucinations, seeing dots and mesh patterns surrounding everything in her mind’s eye. He attributed these early visions to the psychological stress of growing up with an unloving mother who forbade him from painting and tried to impose conventional expectations on his behavior.
Although she continues to experience hallucinations, Kusama has learned to live with them and incorporate them into her art. Kusama once told an American art publication, “My artwork is an expression of my life, especially my mental illness.” Bomb Magazine.
After attending the Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts, Kusama held her first exhibitions in her hometown of Matsumoto. She was unusually open about her mental health at a time when such topics were heavily stigmatized. “It was extraordinary that he addressed it so openly,” says curator Stefan Diederichs. kusama retrospective At the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, which will be on display until August 2, 2026.
“For him, art was a survival strategy and a form of therapy, which he always made clear without making it the main focus,” the curator told DW.
Kusama’s escape to New York
For Kusama, who was born on March 22, 1929, life in Japan soon became too stifling. “[My parents] Yayoi once told author Andrew Solomon, “There were always attempts to tie me into arranged marriages with men I had never met, who came from very exclusive families.”
Ultimately, she broke free from the traditions and expectations of post-war Japan and moved to New York in 1958. “She was exceptionally self-confident and determined to follow her own path and build her career,” Diederichs says. Kusama’s mother provided financial support for her to get started – on the condition that she never return to Japan.
Fellow artist Georgia O’Keeffe, to whom Kusama had previously sent a selection of her works, helped her gain a foothold in America.
Kusama often spent entire days working and created a vast body of art. She became part of the New York avant-garde, where her microscopic “infinity net” paintings attracted attention for their hypnotic, repetitive patterns.
His works, including soft, often phallic fabric sculptures, are similar to some of the approaches of contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.
Curator Stephan Diederichs explains, “She was very confident in saying that she set standards upon which her male colleagues later worked.” However, he adds, it is impossible to determine with certainty who was first.
In any case, her male co-stars were more commercially successful than the young Asian woman, which contributed to her suicide attempt, which she fortunately survived. Kusama made a statement about the gender pay gap with her sculpture “Traveling Life” (1964), which depicts a staircase covered with phallic figures with women’s shoes on the stairs. Phalluses were another recurring motif that Kusama used to express her “fear of sex as a dirty thing”, Kusama wrote in her autobiography published in 2002.
Returning to the universe through self-destruction
Also in the 1960s, Kusama organized “events” to protest the Vietnam War. They were often provocative, sometimes including nudity and sexual activity, although Kusama often stated that she did not personally participate in the sexual aspects of these events.
Kusama wrote in her autobiography, “Why should people who share pleasures with each other go to war and kill others? Through free sex, the wall between myself and others can be torn down.”
She was known for painting nude female and male bodies in dots, with the aim of erasing the individuality of the painted figures. She calls it “self-destruction” and it runs throughout her work: “By destroying yourself, you return to the infinite universe,” Kusama once said.
In 1966, Kusama staged her work “Narcissus Garden” at the Venice Biennale. He placed 1,500 mirrored spheres on the lawn outside the entrance to the Venice Biennale, to which he was not invited, and attempted to sell them for $2 each. Biennale officials eventually intervened and stopped the sale, but the work still served as a sharp critique of the commercialization of the art world and the role of artists in it.
Fame later in life
In 1993, Kusama returned to the Venice Biennale as an officially invited artist, representing Japan.
he told later financial Times that she wanted to “be more famous, even more famous”, a comment that reflected how important recognition had become in her career and led some commentators to criticize her excessive focus on fame.
Today, she could hardly be more famous: In 2018, the Broad Museum in Los Angeles sold 90,000 advance tickets for a Kusama exhibition. A year-long show at London’s Tate Modern in 2022 sold out in no time, leading to a one-year extension. His artworks are now sold for lakhs in auctions.
Yayoi Kusama returned to Japan in 1973 and chose to live in a psychiatric clinic in Tokyo, where she continued to receive treatment for her mental health.
Despite this, she remains highly productive, creating paintings, sculptures, installations and other works that are displayed around the world. “I will continue to create artwork as long as my passion will allow me to do so. I am deeply touched that so many people have been my fans. I guess I won’t know how people will evaluate my art until after I die. I create art for the healing of all mankind.”
The Museum Ludwig in Cologne is showing the retrospective “Yayoi Kusama” until October 2, 2026.
This article was originally written in German.