TRIBUTE:Yayoi Kusama-Retrospective

Yayoi Kusama is internationally renowned for her exploration of themes such as infinity, self-obliteration, and repetition. Her distinctive use of polka dots, mirror rooms, and immersive installations has become emblematic of her artistic vision. Kusama’s work invites viewers into dynamic environments that blur the boundaries between the observer and the infinite, challenging perceptions of space and the self. One of the highlights of the exhibition will be a specially created new version of her iconic installations, which embodies these central themes.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Stedelijk Museum Archive

The expansive exhibition of Yayoi Kusama at Stedelijk Museum explore more than seven decades of Kusama’s groundbreaking work. The exhibition delves into the wide range of artistic media Kusama has worked with over the years, including painting, sculpture, installations, drawing, fashion, collage, happenings, and more.

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most celebrated living artists, internationally renowned for her signature polka dots  and iconic “Infinity Mirror Rooms”. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto (Japan), Kusama began creating art when she was still a child. Around the age of 20, she studied traditional Japanese painting in Kyoto. A decade later, she left Japan for the United States. In New York, she emerged as a central figure of the 1960s avant-garde with her groundbreaking experimental work in a wide range of media.

After returning to Japan in 1973, she continued to expand her artistic practice, began publishing literary works, and rose to global prominence. Today, Kusama is still creating new works. Kusama’s remarkable body of work – spanning seven decades from her early postwar experiments to her most current creations – has had a lasting influence on contemporary art and the international art world, and has played a pivotal role in shaping art as an immersive experience.

The portrait “Untitled” (1939) shows a young woman with her eyes clo- sed, looking inward. Her face is shrouded in a haze of dots, which spread out into the surrounding space as small, loosely drawn loops. Hidden on the other side of the sheet is another drawing: a vase with flowers is set within a space likewise dominated by dots and repeating patterns. Both of these drawings, made by Yayoi Kusama when she was only ten years old, already display some of the motifs and stylistic elements that would become characteristic of her later work: flowers, polka dots and net-like patterns. They also offer a glimpse into the young artist’s inner life: from childhood onward, Kusama experienced visions and auditory hallucinations. To cope with these oftentimes difficult experiences, she expressed them in numerous drawings. As the artist emphasises, these phenomena are a key source of inspiration for her artistic practice.

Except for its delicate legs,“Untitled (Chair)” (1963) is covered in protrusions of varying sizes and lengths. In the early 1960s, Yayoi Kusama began transforming everyday objects – furniture, dishware and items of clothing – by fitting them with organic shapes made from stuffed fabric and unifying these compositions with a layer of monochrome paint. She thus translated a central principle of her painting practice into sculpture: the seemingly endless accumulation of elements of similar form. In this process, the objects’ original function oftentimes recedes into the background. At the same time, they operate as an interface between art and life – for years, Kusama wore a dress covered in phallic shapes (Room 5) at her happenings as well as at events and photo shoots. Kusama’s textile works also tell a story of emancipation: in her youth during World War II, she worked as a seamstress in a parachute factory. In the 1950s, she began making her own clothing. From the early 1960s, against a background of sexual liberation, she designed radical fashion pieces, later sold through her label “Kusama Fashion Incorporated”.

“Black Flower” and “Pollen” are two very large, organically shaped sculptures. With their numerous protuberances, they recall the vocabulary of Yayoi Kusama’s works from the 1960s, in which she altered the surfaces of everyday objects through additions and accretions. Her transition from found objects to autonomous sculpture was already visible in her small, painted ceramics from the 1970s. In these two textile works, the swollen bulges are covered in dots. They form sturdy stems, opening at the top like funnels to reveal a fuzzy filling. The two sculptures are reminiscent of plants – an interpretation encouraged by their titles – but also suggestive of human reproductive organs and pubic hair. Like Kusama’s earlier images of flowers, they are far removed from the quaintly decorative, hinting rather at the immensely forceful life cycles of nature.

“Pumpkin” (1981), volume is created solely by the subtle arrangement of black dots. This relation is reversed in the surrounding net pattern, where yellow lines structure a black expanse. The framing with zigzag-edged strips of fabric emphasises the motif’s ornamental character. Pumpkins hold a central place in Yayoi Kusama’s universe. Next to drawing and painting them, she has produced small papier-mâché or ceramic sculptures. More recent larger versions, such as seen in this room, were made using fibre-reinforced plastic. All are covered in polka dots, linking them to the imagined infinite space of Kusama’s pictorial world. The artist’s parents owned a plant nursery, and she traces her fascination with pumpkins back to early childhood experiences: “I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form. What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness. That and its solid spiritual balance.”

“Infinity Mirrored Room – The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe” (2025) is covered in polka dots, giant biomorphic shapes wind their way through the entire room. Their repetition and non- hierarchical arrangement recall the fundamental principles governing botanical organisms and their communities. Multiplied into seeming infinity on the walls and ceiling, they create the labyrinthic atmosphere of an artificial primeval forest. In the centre of this installation, a mirrored space invites another, more intimate experience. Here, the colours appear inverted and the countless reflections seem to abolish the confines of the room. Created especially for the exhibition, this monumental installation offers access to two distinct kinds of spatial perception by combining two different types of works developed by Yayoi Kusama over the course of her career: her balloon installations, whose effect is best experienced when moving through the space, and her contemplative “Infinity Mirror Rooms”, in which mirrors create the optical illusion of infinite replication.

Photo: Installation view ’Yayoi Kusama’, 2026, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis © YAYOI KUSAMA

Info: Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Duration: 11/9/2026-17/1/2027, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.stedelijk.nl/