Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is one of Japan’s most prominent avant-garde artists, who has consistently pursued the artistic philosophy of “self-obliteration” across a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, film, performance, and literature.

Since childhood, Kusama experienced hallucinations and auditory visions, which she began to translate into her art as repetitive motifs such as nets and polka dots. After moving to the United States in 1957, she became an active figure in the New York art scene. Beginning with her early Infinity Net paintings and soft sculptures that covered furniture and clothing with sewn fabric protrusions, she went on to pioneer immersive installations using mirrors and lights, as well as street happenings featuring nude performers. Intersecting with the currents of Pop Art and Minimalism of the 1960s, Kusama established a singular practice rooted in her body and inner world.

After returning to Japan in 1973, she continued her creative output. Since 2009, she has produced over 800 paintings in her celebrated series My Eternal Soul, where vibrant colors and symbolic motifs fuse her psychological landscape with cosmic imagery. In 2021, she launched a new series titled Every Day I Pray for Love, and continues to create prolifically, sustaining an artistic career spanning over eight decades.

Kusama’s works are marked by immersive experiences that dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, expanding the notion of existence itself. Her Infinity Mirror Room installations, in particular, have drawn massive audiences across the globe, with their poetic yet obsessive universes prompting fundamental questions about perception and being in contemporary life.

Biography
1929　Born in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan
1957　Moved to the United States, began working in New York city’s art scene the following year
1973　Returned to Japan; based in Tokyo since
2016　Awarded the Order of Culture, Japan
Lives and works in Tokyo

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025　Yayoi Kusama: Retrospective, Fondation Beyeler, Basel (touring to Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam)
2024　Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
2023　Yayoi Kusama – You, Me and the Balloons, Aviva Studios, Manchester
2022　Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, M+, Hong Kong (toured to Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Serralves Foundation, Porto)
2022　Yayoi Kusama: My Soul Blooms Forever, Qatar Museums, Doha
2021　KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature, New York Botanical Garden, New York
2021　Yayoi Kusama, Gropius Bau, Berlin (toured to Tel Aviv Museum of Art)
2017　Infinity Mirrors, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (toured to Seattle Art Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Cleveland Museum of Art; High Museum of Art, Atlanta)
2017　Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of the Rainbow, National Gallery Singapore (toured to Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Museum MACAN, Jakarta)
2017　Yayoi Kusama: My Eternal Soul, The National Art Center, Tokyo
2015　Yayoi Kusama, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (toured to Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Helsinki Art Museum)
2011　Yayoi Kusama, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (toured to Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York)
1998　Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (toured to The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
1993　Represented Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale, Venice
1989　Yayoi Kusama, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford; Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York
1952　First solo exhibition, Matsumoto, Japan

Selected Collections
M+ (Hong Kong)
Museum MACAN (Jakarta)
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Tate, London
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
…and many others