Infinity Room FireFlies
Yayoi Kusama
You are getting obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies
“Become one with eternity. Obliterate your personality.” Yayoi Kusama
Glittering points of light echo into an expanse of infinite space. Step into Yayoi Kusama’s mirror room and become part of something timeless. Like the experiences she constructs, Kusama’s art has never been confined by boundaries. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto Japan, she studied traditional Japanese painting before moving to New York in 1958 where she created large-scale paintings with repeated motifs, crafted innovative sculptures from everyday materials, directed performative Happenings at notable landmarks, and experimented with fashion and fiction. Her artworks posed a challenge to a male-dominated art world, protested war, and integrated art into life.
After 1965, Kusama assembled light, sound, and sculpture in mirrored rooms that suspend space and time. In her more recent works, the polka dots that she covered paintings, bodies, and environments with become dots of starlight in faraway galaxies or a swarm of luminescent fireflies on a summer evening. Her practice “obliterates” artist and audience. Through material repetition and the construction of infinite space, she prompts us to consider ourselves in the context of the universe, the natural world, and the community around us. Kusama returned to Japan in the 1970s where she continues to imagine a boundless world with the potential for peace.
From the Placard: The Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
Infinity Room FireFlies
Yayoi Kusama
You are getting obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies
“Become one with eternity. Obliterate your personality.” Yayoi Kusama
Glittering points of light echo into an expanse of infinite space. Step into Yayoi Kusama’s mirror room and become part of something timeless. Like the experiences she constructs, Kusama’s art has never been confined by boundaries. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto Japan, she studied traditional Japanese painting before moving to New York in 1958 where she created large-scale paintings with repeated motifs, crafted innovative sculptures from everyday materials, directed performative Happenings at notable landmarks, and experimented with fashion and fiction. Her artworks posed a challenge to a male-dominated art world, protested war, and integrated art into life.
After 1965, Kusama assembled light, sound, and sculpture in mirrored rooms that suspend space and time. In her more recent works, the polka dots that she covered paintings, bodies, and environments with become dots of starlight in faraway galaxies or a swarm of luminescent fireflies on a summer evening. Her practice “obliterates” artist and audience. Through material repetition and the construction of infinite space, she prompts us to consider ourselves in the context of the universe, the natural world, and the community around us. Kusama returned to Japan in the 1970s where she continues to imagine a boundless world with the potential for peace.
From the Placard: The Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona