But what is also important to recognise is she really does fit into art history, and she was there in late Surrealism, she was there at the birth of Pop. Everywhere we go we see.to the biennials and triennials across the world, you see big Kusama installations. They are on the face of the London tube map at the moment. Her spots are ubiquitous, and they are instantly recognisable.

I think Kusama is now seen alongside people like Murakami or Damien Hirst, or Jeff Koons as a kind of globally branded artist. And the interesting thing about this work in particular is that where she’s moved from creating an environment of spots that we passively appreciate or enjoy a walk through, she has now moved on to actually involving the audience in the creation of this dotted, spotted interior. It’s a reflection of her vision, but it’s also a way of embracing the whole world in a kind of overall pattern. It’s her way of kind of covering the surface. And from that period of time, she comes back to the spot with great regularity, and by the end of the sixties, she is actually painting a landscape, she’s painting spots on people’s bodies, onto animals, and the spot becomes a very regular motif throughout her work. And in her very, very first mature works of art, just after finishing art school in Kyoto, the spot emerges as a pattern in her work. And in her biography, she talks about experiences really of a very young child, almost sort of hallucinogenic experiences, where her vision of landscape and people was clouded by spots. Kusama is best known for her brilliantly coloured dotted surfaces, her installations with blow-ups and her walls covered in brilliant spots. And then everybody is invited to place the stickers anywhere they like in the room, according to any pattern, any idea they have, anything they like they can do with the stickers. People come in, they are given a sheet of coloured stickers in different sizes, which have been produced specially for the project and in accordance with the artist’s specifications her choice of colour, her choice of finish, and her choice of size. Installation view of The obliteration room 2011 as part of ‘Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever’, Gallery of Modern Art, 2011 / © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.At the start of the project, this room was completely white – white ceiling, white floor, white walls, white furniture.

Often involving public nudity - the artist hoped to contrast the beauty of the youthful human body with the violence of the US–Vietnam War - they challenged prevailing moral frameworks. Kusama’s happenings, known as ‘body festivals’ - or ‘orgies’, as they were often sensationally reported in the mainstream press - typically provided platforms for spontaneous and improvisatory behaviour within conceptual and aesthetic frameworks determined by the artist. A product of the postwar Avant-garde, which almost immediately crossed over into popular culture, or at least underground counter culture, happenings developed as unconventional performance events increasingly relying on audience reaction and direct participation. Interactivity became an important component of Kusama’s work in the mid to late 1960s, when her solo public performances expanded into participatory happenings. The white room is gradually obliterated over the course of the exhibition, the space changing measurably with the passage of time as the dots accumulate as a result of thousands and thousands of collaborators. While this may suggest an everyday topography drained of all colour and specificity, it also functions as a blank canvas to be invigorated - or, in Kusama’s vocabulary, ‘obliterated’ - through the application, to every available surface, of brightly coloured stickers in the shape of dots.Īs with many of Kusama’s installations, the work is disarmingly simple in its elemental composition however, it brilliantly exploits the framework of its presentation. In this reworked and enlarged installation, an Australian domestic environment is recreated in the gallery space, complete with locally sourced furniture and ornamentation, all of which has been painted completely white. The obliteration room 2011 revisits the popular interactive children’s project developed by Yayoi Kusama for the Queensland Art Gallery's ‘APT 2002: Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’.

Obliteration room by yayoi kusama