Yayoi Kusama

Kusama is also known for large scale immersive installations that envelope the viewer with her accumulations, obsessions and repetitions. This is deliberate and intentional and offer an essential form of arts therapy by illuminating Kusama’s intrusive thoughts and sharing them with the world.

Born in 1929, she began drawing at the age of 10 as an escape from a childhood of neglect and she expresses her early experiences with hallucinogenic visions. She went on to study at the Kyoto City University of Arts before moving to New York in 1958 to pursue a career in the arts. Embracing the avant garde scene through the 60s, Kusama first came to public attention when she coordinated a series of happenings in which naked participants were painted with brightly coloured polka dots. She returned to Japan in the early 70s and checked herself into a a mental hospital where she still lives. She wrote surreal short stories and poems for almost a decade before starting to make art again. She represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1993, leading to many subsequent solo exhibitions around the world.

Kusama remains one of the most significant contemporary artists of the day and her obsessional language of polka dots and bold colours has come to establish itself as its own genre.