Centre

This is an essay elaborating on the theme of nature in Yayoi Kusama’s work.

Yayoi Kusama’s fascination with the natural world began at a young age, as she was growing up on her parents’ seed and flower farm in Matsumoto, Japan. She took refuge and found artistic inspiration in the vast expanse of natural environments that were lush and overflowing with flowers and plants. The boundless landscapes promised Kusama that nothing in nature exists alone—we are each a small part of an infinite universe, in a multiplicity of universes.

Kusama began having visions at the age of ten, believing that flowers were multiplying and speaking to her. With these experiences, she came to understand the human and non-human world as equal living entities. Through her artwork, Kusama welcomes us into her world, where we become one with nature.

She takes comfort in certain organic elements, such as pumpkins. She first drew them as a child and then later, as an adult, began making sculptures of them. Kusama found their colour, texture, and whimsical form to be human-like, and this brought her joy. Soon, they began to stand in as self-portraits. The spirituality that she associates with pumpkins brings her back down to earth, and she uses her art to catalyze this positive feeling. The reflective bronze surface of the sculptures implicates the viewer, harnessing Kusama’s ideal in merging with the pumpkins.

Her depictions of the cycles of life and death invite us to reflect on our ever changing lives and environments. This is especially discernable in Kusama’s My Eternal Soul (2009–present) collection of paintings, in which each work is a universe from which life emerges (and the titles are often related to death). Her famous polka dots, which can be found in her work throughout her career, highlight a cosmic multiplicity: from the expanse of a field of flowers to the immensity of the universe, our microscopic presence in a macroscopic world.

If Kusama has one goal in life, it is to promote peace and love in the universe. She creates her paintings as though she is writing poetry—it comes to her naturally and without a predetermined structure. It is as though they are created instinctively, driven by all of the artist’s emotions. Her visions and deep affinity for nature have allowed her to listen to what it has to say. If more people opened their minds to listen to elements of nature, what would they have to say?

Movements: Yayoi Kusama is a tool designed by the PHI Foundation’s Department of Education to encourage visitors to develop and elaborate on some key concepts of the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE.