Studio: Yayoi Kusama

This new body of work by Yayoi Kusama presents a series of wall sculptures that features repeating faces in biomorphic shapes—a motif that draws from one of the artist’s most celebrated and iconic series, My Eternal Soul.

The repetition of eyes, noses, and mouths reflects the long history of obsession within Kusama’s work, which stems from her desire to make art that is both autobiographical and created outside of the confines of the self.

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (6-P/Blue), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

22 1/2 x 46 3/4 x 4 inches (57.2 x 118.7 x 10.2 cm)

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Yayoi Kusama, ALL ABOUT THE HUMAN LOVE, 2015 (detail)

These motifs derive from the artist’s ongoing My Eternal Soul paintings (begun in 2009) in which they often intermingle with amorphous, biomorphic shapes.

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (8-B/LG), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

28 1/4 x 77 3/4 x 3 1/2 inches (71.8 x 197.5 x 8.9 cm)

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Yayoi Kusama, DWELLING OF LOVE, 2016 (detail)

Many of Kusama’s largest sculptures were recently on view in a landmark presentation across two hundred fifty acres at The New York Botanical Garden.

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: Cosmic Nature, The New York Botanical Garden, New York, 2021. Photo by Kyle Knodell

“The faces (self-portraits?) that occasionally pop up—some smiling, some crying, some with mouths gaping—are a further childlike and, indeed, humorous motif unique to this serial world.”

—Akira Tatehata, art critic, curator, and poet

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (3-R/W), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

57 7/8 x 53 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (147 x 135.9 x 6.4 cm)

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Yayoi Kusama working on My Eternal Soul paintings in her studio, Tokyo, 2014

Yayoi Kusama, ROAD TO ETERNITY, 2013 (detail)

“They are an explosion of ideas and represent my preoccupation with infinity and the search for peace and love which has always been at the heart of my work. Through their vibrant colors, I feel my happiness; their strength and clarity flood me with energy.”

—Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (2-LB/DG), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

20 5/8 x 70 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches (52.4 x 178.4 x 8.3 cm)

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“With her lack of premeditation and her practice of letting her hand lead the way, she has, in phenomenological terms, trained her body to acquire its own sense of memory, which is cumulative and gradual in character and thus thrives on repetition.”

—Mika Yoshitake, curator

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (1-Blue/LB), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

20 1/4 x 118 1/2 x 4 inches (51.4 x 301 x 10.2 cm)

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Yayoi Kusama, MY HEART SOARING IN THE SUNSET, 2013 (detail)

“Part of Kusama’s genius resides in her understanding that critical discourse is a material element that can be folded or shaped by the artist like fabric or clay. Throughout her prolific career, her work has consistently, although sometimes obliquely, asserted itself within the frame of a larger cultural discourse while remaining uniquely ‘apart,’ and autonomous.”

—Chris Kraus, writer and filmmaker

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (10-B/W), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

11 3/4 x 98 1/8 x 3 1/4 inches (29.8 x 249.2 x 8.3 cm)

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“I was able to shed my painter’s skin and metamorphose into an environmental sculptor. I went on finding new ways to turn my obsessions into concrete forms.”

—Yayoi Kusama on her first experiments with sculpture in 1961

Portrait of Yayoi Kusama at Tokyo Bay, 1993. Photograph by Yuichi Hiruta. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (4-Y/V), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

32 1/4 x 59 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches (81.9 x 151.1 x 10.8 cm)

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Yayoi Kusama, WEDDING CEREMONY, 2014 (detail)

Even before I was born,
the shining art had been sending off sparks across the world.
Why this whole body of mine symbolizes my living and
why it represents everything about my body and mind.
I want to ask myself these questions.
Even after I have been led away beyond the universe by
the body and mind born out of my body,
I want to keep living, today, tomorrow, and the days to come,
carrying pieces called art that were left inside my body.
By going through death and life,
and leaping across the universe and the earth just as I am doing today,
I am determined to keep fighting ever more vigorously.
To the best of my ability, and
with all my might,
I will keep fighting.
With all my might.

—Yayoi Kusama, “Beyond Art” (2010), in Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love, 2020

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (5-B/OR), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

30 1/8 x 31 1/2 x 2 5/8 inches (76.5 x 80 x 6.7 cm)

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“The work infiltrates consciousness, colonizing and multiplying on every level. This occurs within an individual piece in the formal ecology of bits endlessly replicating, consuming the host—canvas, chair, tentacle—that originated from uninfected materials. Each painting, each sculpture, is a microcosm of Kusama’s oeuvre: a single, complete iteration of her ongoing project.”

—Kevin McGarry, art critic

Yayoi Kusama

SOULS OF WOMEN THAT CONTINUE FOREVER (9-DG/P), 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

23 1/4 x 117 1/2 x 3 7/8 inches (59.1 x 298.4 x 9.8 cm)

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Installation view of works by Yayoi Kusama, David Zwirner, 2021

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Header image: Yayoi Kusama in her studio, 2014. Photo by Go Itami

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