Yayoi Kusama
Born in Matsumoto City, Japan in 1929, Kusama now lives and works in Tokyo. Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and has been the subject of many major international museum exhibitions, including a major touring retrospective in 2011-12 presented at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2013-15 she is the subject of three major international museum exhibitions: Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Obsession at Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires, travelling to Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil, Rio de Janeiro; Centro Cultural Banco de Brazil, Brasilia; Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Kusama Yayoi: A Dream I Dreamed at the Daegu Art Musuem, Korea, travelling to Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; Seoul Arts Centre, Korea; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and other Asian venues; and Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, travelling to the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama; Matsumoto City Museum of Art; Niigata City Art Museum; Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art; Oita Art Museum; the Museum of Art, Kochi and other Japanese venues.
Even though Kusama’s work shares affiliations with Surrealism, Minimalism, Pop art, the Zero and Nul movements, Eccentric Abstraction and Feminist art, Kusama's practice resists any singular classification. From Infinity Nets, where intricate lattices of paint cover the surface of her canvases, to Accumulation sculptures, where everyday objects are made uncanny with a covering of soft-sculpture phallic forms or dried macaroni; from the provocative happenings she staged in New York in the 1960s to the mysterious and magical mirrored room installations of recent years; from monumental outdoor sculptures to influential collaborations with figures as varied as Peter Gabriel and Marc Jacobs; Kusama's work has been far-reaching, expansive and immersive, allowing the viewer to enter into a fully realised Kusama world.
