The Japanese artist best known for vibrant sculptures covered in polka dots and shimmering Infinity Room Mirrors has died. Yayoi Kusama was 97 years old.
Her exhibit "All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins" is currently on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it's been wowing visitors with its various sizes of dotted gourds surrounded by mirrors.
The exhibit is drawn from works created in 1991, part of her seminal pumpkin room, Mirror Room (Pumpkin) (1991). That work was shown in the Japanese Pavilion at the 1993 Biennale Arte in Venice.
Ainsley Cameron, director of curatorial affairs and initiatives at the Cincinnati Art Museum, says Kusama's career spanned 70 years and many countries.
"She was really one of these leading artists of the radical art movement in New York. She was working alongside Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Eva Hesse — she was really at the center of what was happening, and she was creating these happenings," Cameron told WVXU's Cincinnati Edition. "She was creating performance experiences that you would participate in across New York and across different countries in Europe as well, where she was bringing this idea of self obliteration to life by covering people, covering animals, covering spaces, covering sculptures with the dot."
While Kusama is well-known now, Cameron says it was frustrating that she struggled during the bulk of her career to achieve acclaim and recognition.
"She is a female artist and a female artist of color, and [in] 1950s, 1960s New York, even though it was this avant-garde art movement, there were still barriers to getting the recognition that one really deserved," she said.
Cameron said Kusama was open about her struggles with mental health during a time when many weren't. She reportedly dealt with visual and oral hallucinations, which she used to inform her art.
However, Cameron says that shouldn't overshadow her artistic achievements.
"She is one of the most important contemporaries, sculptor, painters, printmakers, writers, performing art, performance artists working today."
Listen to the full Cincinnati Edition conversation.
WVXU has reached out to the Cincinnati Art Museum for further comment, and this report may be updated.
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