The Polka Dots of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama, b. 1929, has had a monumental impact on performance and installation as art. Her work continues to push the envelope of artistic expression and creativity in the 3-dimensional world. 

As a young child, Kusama worked tirelessly in a military factory sewing materials used by soldiers. The artist wanted to start over in a new country where she did not have to deal with abusive parents and the restrictive culture about women, so she immigrated to the United States in 1958. After leaving and working in New York for some years, Kusama returned to Japan. Since the 1970s, Kusama has lived as a voluntary patient in a psychiatric hospital, leaving some days to work at her studio a short distance away. 

While much of the polka dots reflects Kusama’s visual hallucinations and attempts to challenge her anxiety on a larger scale, the overuse of shapes, too, references her childhood, where the artist was unfortunately intertwined in her parents’ marital problems: 

“My father had lots of lovers and I had to spy on him for my mother. Because my mother was very angry it made even the idea of sex very traumatic for me. My work, including the naked happenings, is always about overcoming that bad experience.”

In “Odyssey of My Struggling Soul,” Kusama paints a vivid picture of her childhood experiences growing up during World War II, when she began to have visual hallucinations, suicidal ideations, and depression: “I don’t consider myself an artist, [but rather] I am pursuing art in order to correct the disability which began in my childhood.”

Hearing the way Kusama describes her disability makes me sad, as no one should feel the need to “fix” what makes everyone uniquely different. However, her comments represent how people of her generation still view disability and how disability has long been viewed in various cultures outside of the United States.

Yayoi Kusama, Mirror Room, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen