Yayoi in the Continuum

This exhibition reveals Yayoi Kusama’s evolving perspective on the great philosophical themes of life and death through a diverse body of work, from her war-ridden paintings of the 1940s and 1950s to her more recent pieces. In her anti-war interventions of the late 1960s, Kusama painted dots on the human body using the same concept of “self-annihilation” while also highlighting the beauty of life and the human body itself. During the 1970s and 1980s, after the loss of her father and her lover, coinciding with her return to Japan, Kusama produced numerous dark-toned collages and three-dimensional works, as well as poems and novels, centered on the theme of the end of life. In her series of paintings since 2000, Kusama has depicted the beauty of existence and the joy of living on canvases brimming with vivid colors, driven by the ever-looming presence of the end of her life.