Yayoi Kusama: Beyond the Dots

Personal Reflection

I went in thinking I knew Kusama. I really didn’t. The biggest surprise was actually the early work. Her 1950 Self-Portrait, for example, already contains this idea of the self disappearing into something larger. Once you see that, the later Infinity Nets, dots and mirrored spaces suddenly make much more sense. They don’t feel like separate inventions anymore. They feel like different versions of the same thought that she has been working through for decades. And then there is the strange experience of seeing the Kusama before she became Kusama™. Some of the photographs, performances, clothes and sculptural experiments are weird, sexual, funny and occasionally uncomfortable. I liked that. It made her feel much less like the artist of an endlessly reproduced Instagram aesthetic and much more radical. A few tips after visiting: don’t rush toward the famous pieces. Spend time downstairs with the early paintings and read some of the wall texts because they genuinely change how you understand what comes later. Look for recurring shapes rather than just dots: cells, flowers, nets, bodies, repetition. And give yourself enough time. With 300+ works, this isn’t really a “quick Kusama stop.” My favourite part was realizing that the spectacular work isn’t necessarily the most interesting work. Sometimes a small painting from 1950 tells you more about Kusama than a room full of mirrors.