Artist Quote: "Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos." Achievements: From 2012 through 2015, three major museum solo presentations of the artist’s work simultaneously traveled to major museums throughout Japan, Asia, and Central and South America. Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of the Rainbow, which marked the first large-scale exhibition of Kusama’s work presented in Southeast Asia, opened at the National Gallery of Singapore in 2017 and traveled to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Jakarta. A museum dedicated to the artist’s work, Yayoi Kusama Museum, opened in 2017 in Tokyo. In 2014, Yayoi Kusama's exhibitions were the most visited worldwide. Kusama is one of the most tagged artists on Instagram with some 80 million posts. Highest Sold Work: Her auction record stands at $7.1 million, a figure achieved for her "Infinity Net" painting in 2014. Her largest silver pumpkin sculptures sell for $500,000. | About the Artist: Kusama was born into a wealthy family in rural Japan that managed extensive plant nurseries. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Kusama was 13, she was conscripted to work in a factory that produced fabrics for parachutes. In the evening, she painted intricate flowers over and over. Kusama moved to New York at age 27. The 89-year-old Japanese artist, who for the past 41 years has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric hospital, opened her own five-story gallery in Tokyo. Kusama sleeps at the hospital each night and works in her studio across the road six days a week. She has a small team of assistants in her studio, and gallerists who look after her interests in New York, Tokyo and London. About the Artwork: Well known for her use of dense patterns of polka dots and nets, as well as her intense, large-scale environments, Kusama works in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, and immersive installation. By adding all-over marks and dots to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes she feels as if she is making them (and herself) melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. Each visitor can spend 45 seconds in Kusama’s installations – her immersive “infinity mirror rooms” of colored lights, and painted pumpkins and polka dots that reflect for ever. |
Sources:
http://yayoi-kusama.jp/e/information/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/sep/23/yayoi-kusama-infinity-film-victoria-miro-exhibition
https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-yayoi-kusama
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/yayoi-kusama
http://yayoi-kusama.jp/e/information/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/sep/23/yayoi-kusama-infinity-film-victoria-miro-exhibition
https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-yayoi-kusama
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/yayoi-kusama