Born in 1929 in Matsumoto City, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.
As a young artist in New York, Kusama produced her first astonishing Net paintings in 1959, entirely covered in rhythmic undulations of small, thickly painted loops. The inherent philosophical paradox of these paintings—that “infinity” could be quantified and constrained within the arbitrary structure of a readymade canvas—combined with the more subjective and obsessional implications of their process, distinguish these works from Minimalist abstraction, which would dominate the New York art scene several years later. The mesmerizing, transcendent space of the Nets was further reinforced by Kusama’s own insistent psychosomatic associations to her paintings. She went on to develop other striking bodies of work, including the phallic soft-sculptures Accumulation, Sex Obsession, and Compulsion Furniture, which she later incorporated into full-scale sensorial environments. From 1967 she staged provocative happenings in various locations, from the New York Stock Exchange to Central Park to the Museum of Modern Art. Painting the participants’ bodies with polka dots or dressing them in her custom-made fashion designs, she createdrisqué situational performances that merged her inner artistic world with external realities. In the early 1970s Kusama returned to Japan, where she began writing shockingly visceral and surrealistic novels, short stories, and poetry.
Kusama’s works are represented in international collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; Tate Modern, London, UK; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan.
