Japanese Artist Yayoi Kusama Dies at 97

Known for her bright polka dot works and mirror installations, the avant-garde pioneer forever changed how we experience infinity.

Yayoi Kusama, one of the most defining voices in contemporary art, has passed away at 97. According to an official statement from her studio released on Thursday, she died at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14.

Known for her polka dots, pumpkins, mirrored rooms, and bright red bob, Kusama spent over seven decades nurturing an avant-garde practice that both transformed her deeply personal experiences into an unmistakable visual language and reshaped the experience of contemporary art for generations to follow.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, she began drawing flowers as a child as a way to cope with what would become lifelong hallucinations, namely visions of talking swarms of flowers. Dense fields of polka dots and repeated symbols were grounding amidst the vastness of the world.

Art was also a means of social critique. She used her work to confront ideas, like shame and desire, while embracing the “outsider” title in the context of the New York art scene. “I cannot imagine how I will be classified after my death,” she said in a 1965 interview. “It feels good to be an outsider.” Throughout her career, Kusama returned to themes of repetition and a concept she called “self-obliteration” — the dissolution of oneself into an endless universe — seen in Infinity Mirror Rooms, a series she started later that year.

Amongst her most famous pieces is “Narcissus Garden,” a rogue installation at the 1966 Venice Biennale. The “lake” of 1,500 reflective balls explores what it means to find salvation in vanity, especially within the context of the art world at the time. Kusama sold the balls for $2 each under the banner “Your narcissism for sale, ” before the Biennale shut it down.

In 1977, she checked herself into Seiwa mental hospital in Tokyo. The facility provided her with the stability her projects required. She lived there permanently, leaving during the daytime to work in her nearby studio. In the time since, she’s been the subject of dozens of major surveys and retrospectives around the world.

“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” her studio wrote. “We will carry forward Kusama’s wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world.”