Yayoi Kusama was a Japanese contemporary artist known for her use of polka dots, repeated patterns and mirrored installations. Across a career spanning more than seven decades, she worked in painting, sculpture, installation, performance, film, fashion and literature, with ideas of repetition, infinity and what she terms ‘self-obliteration’ recurring throughout her work.
Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama began making art at an early age. She has described experiencing visual hallucinations from childhood, including patterns that appeared to spread across her surroundings. Dots and nets consequently appeared in her earliest drawings and became motifs to which she would return throughout her career.
Kusama travelled to the United States in 1957 and settled in New York the following year. There she became part of the city's avant-garde art scene, producing her Infinity Net paintings alongside soft sculptures and installations using mirrors and electric lights. During the 1960s her practice expanded into performance, body painting, fashion, film and anti-war happenings. Repetition and proliferation became central to what Kusama described as ‘self-obliteration’, an idea that has remained fundamental to her work.
In 1965, Kusama created her first Infinity Mirror Room, Phalli's Field. By using mirrors to repeatedly reflect objects within an enclosed space, she extended the repetition found in her paintings into an immersive environment. The Infinity Mirror Rooms have since become among her best-known works.
Kusama returned to Japan in 1973 and continued to develop her practice across painting, sculpture, installation and writing. Pumpkins also became a recurring subject in her work, appearing in paintings and prints as well as large-scale sculptures. Alongside her visual art, Kusama has published novels, poetry and an autobiography, Infinity Net.
Kusama has received numerous international honours, including Japan's Order of Culture in 2016 and the Praemium Imperiale for painting in 2006. The Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo in 2017. She continues to work from her studio in Tokyo, producing paintings, sculptures and installations that develop the themes of repetition and infinity that have occupied her throughout her career. She passed away aged 97 in 2026.
