Yayoi Kusama

I was reintroduced to Yayoi Kusama's work by the Montreal textile artist Kydd Campbell.Yayoi's work had occupied my textile fantasies in the early seventies and gave a visual language for what danced around inside my own head. Her work exemplifies obsessive practice. Forms are repeated somewhere between the moon and infinity. The forms are phallic and cellular. They are soft and sewn and represent the most ominous comfort.She creates entire rooms of objects and presents them with mirrored walls to capture infinity.

“The forms and details in Kusama's work refer to a sense of overwhelming meaning: in most of her works in different media the common theme of a world veiw from a female perspective. The Infinity Net paintings can be seen as referring to weaving patterns: the objects used in most of her environments are household objects such as furniture , food, and utensils. The obsessive image of sexuality, so strongly manifested in many of Kusama's works, is from a female perspective, often involving the artist's own physical participation. It is significant that the artist and her own body are part of the total work, either in photographic documentation or in the events in which the body becomes an integral part.” from Yayoi Kusama Phaidon Books.

I wondered what happened to Yayoi and discovered such an incredible and prolific history to her work. I also discovered that she was very upfront about the fact that she has spent the last 20 years or so living in a mental hospital and being treated for an obsessive neurosis. I saw a picture of Yayoi recently and she has changed. In the picture she was wearing a black feather boa. Her own dark eyes were wide and almost frightened and peered out from a wild feather collar. She is still beautiful and she reminded me of a captured bird.

See Yayoi's work at her official website www. yayoi-kusama.jp