Gallery Visit: Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Modern

Shards of sadness barb me under the Chandelier of Grief. I think about how I should just be enjoying the beauty of what I’m looking at, but can’t quite. This unshakeable ‘shouldness’ is a sensation I recognise as anxiety. Kusama’s chandelier reminds me of morning walks where I’ve felt deaf to the birdsong or like I’m seeing the sky through a pane of glass. Her suspended crystals keep me one-step removed from their beauty by compounding my emotions at pace. In the room’s endless reflections, spears of light multiply prettily before swallowing each other in darkness. It’s only afterwards that I learn Kusama’s intention for the Chandelier of Grief is to offer an experience of sadness and beauty all at once. “Forget yourself. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment,” reads her quote on the wall outside the installation. It’s an ode to the humanity of feeling fragmented, and a feat of aesthetic activism. Pretty things always have powerful things to say in Yayoi Kusama’s work.

Japanese artist Kusama is known for turning her spectators into participants and, subsequently, agents of change. Decades of her paintings, sculptures, performances and installations have offered immersive experiences to onlookers. This deep-dive into others’ consciousness is natural when you consider Kusama’s art began as her own experiences. The Infinity Rooms in particular reflect her creative internal universe and hallucinatory visions throughout her childhood. They were discouraged by her parents, but forged their way into the world through her calling to paint nevertheless.

Born in mountainous Matsumoto, Japan in 1929, Kusama’s world of colour emerged in contrast with the country’s conservatism and economic crisis. On a personal level, her art helped her to contextualise personal trauma. From the age of 10 she remembers feeling deeply psychologically troubled. She describes one childhood memory, which is documented in the exhibition, as:

“One day after gazing at a pattern of red flowers on the tablecloth, I looked up to see that the ceiling, the windows, and the columns seemed to be plastered with the same red floral pattern. I saw the entire room, my entire body, and the entire universe covered with red flowers.”

Fearing her visions would engulf her in a consumption she coined ‘self-obliteration,’ Kusama painted them in an attempt to gain control. Her art circumnavigates anxiety by taking ownership of its very shapes — polka dots being her most famous example.

In 1957, Kusama’s want of a “wider world” took her to the United States. It’s rumoured that she sewed dollar bills into her kimono before making the Pacific crossing. Once in New York, she integrated herself into the 1960s art scene. Walking Piece, exhibited at the Tate, shows her wandering America’s streets in ‘traditional’ Japanese costume. Donning a pink kimono and parasol in a country rife with anti-Japanese propaganda shows that nothing about Kusama’s work is coincidental. In the shadow of the Second World War, navigating the aftershocks of Pearl Harbour and Hiroshima, she fiercely squashes stereotypes with stereotypes.

Another product of Kusama’s work in 1960s New York is Mirror Performance. Photographs at the Tate depict her live installations which combined mirrors, performance and painting. They feature the female body when women’s rights were just forging a conversation. No more so than in Kusama’s own life, as she navigated a male-dominated industry with a taste for creative theft. In 1965, Kusama debuted her mirrored room concept in the ‘Phalli’s Field’ at the Castellane Gallery. Fabric phallic-shaped objects were sewn into the ground between walls of mirrors, that would later become known as her breakthrough. Seven months later, artist Lucas Samaras stole Kusama’s concept by exhibiting his version at the far-more prestigious Pace Gallery. Kusama reportedly threw herself from her apartment window in response. Samaras’ copycatting had been preceded by Claes Oldenberg emulating her soft sculptures from Accumulation No.1 in 1962, and would be succeeded by Andy Warhol duplicating her famous repetitions in his 1966 “Cow Wallpaper”. Although the Samaras incident wouldn’t be the last time she made an attempt on her own life, Kusama’s recovery brought her back stronger than ever as an artist. She became a key player on the New York art scene and the self-assigned ‘Priestess of Polka Dots.’ Today, she’s world-renowned. In the past month, I’ve seen her face on London buses, billboards in Amsterdam and glossed across Swiss magazines.

Kusama’s feminist work explores sexual identity as well as gender politics. Born into a middle class family, Kusama’s first experience of sex consisted of her mother asking her to spy on her adulterous father. In images of Mirror Performance you can see how Kusama reclaims her own sense of sexuality. She and her models are usually alone and never participating in someone else’s pleasure. Women are seen in her art, but never exposed or used. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam war, their playfully painted bodies are also part of Kusama’s activist efforts to counter violent sentiment with love– using her signature polka dots. Kusama’s body-painting events became well-known at the time in NYC. For some, they were an opportunity to lose oneself in colour; for others they would evolve into revelrous orgies.

Polka-dotted bodies also featured in Kusama’s public anti-war demonstrations in the US during the sixties, including an exhibit of naked dancers atop the New York Stock Exchange. Kusama’s 1968 press release for Anatomic Explosion read: ‘The money made with this stock in enabling the war to continue. We protest this cruel, greedy instrument of the war establishment”. The exhibition was all the more striking for biting back against the artist’s cultural mould. The nakedness defied conservative Japanese ideologies of obedient housewifery, whilst its anti-war sentiment contrasted with Kusama’s teenage duties to make parachutes for the Japanese army.

In another attempt to encourage peace, Kusama wrote an open letter to US President Richard Nixon saying:

“Our earth is like one little polka dot, among millions of other celestial bodies, one orb full of hatred and strife amid the peaceful, silent spheres. Let’s you and I change all that and make this world a new Garden of Eden…You can’t eradicate violence by using more violence”.

The letter invited Nixon to an orgy, to which he did not reply or attend, but Kusama hosted regardless and offered erotic services in return for a ceasefire in Vietnam.

Today, Kusama’s Tate exhibition is perhaps best known for The Room Filled With The Brilliance of Life. Here, finally, I find liberty in discombobulation. The brevity of the jewelled illuminations make me savour their glow, instead of anticipating their loss. The drip-drop sound of the room’s moat grounds me. I have no idea why this infinity room had such a different impact on me compared to the Chandelier of Grief, but their opposing names suggests Kusama knows exactly why. She mines different feelings from the same visual illusions by framing them ever so slightly differently. This woman knows how to vacuum pack emotion into space.

Now 94-years-old, Kusama resides in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. She has chosen to live there of her own volition since 1977, but leaves daily to work at her nearby studio. This lifestyle choice is characteristic of how the artist melds confining patterns with infinite possibility. Kusama takes power from her parameters. She has liberated herself from within countless structures ranging from parental control, to psychological trauma, to systemic racism. Rather than escape ourselves, Kusama teaches us to thrive within the less comfortable rooms of our minds, and to ask questions. Her work may pervade sadness at times, but its real poetry is of wild hope.

Urth Magazine exists to inspire and educate photographers, artists and creatives to capture and share their unique visual stories. We strive to nurture a global community that celebrates the artistry, passion, and diversity in the world of photography. Discover Urth tools online or stories on Urth Magazine.