Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins

Cincinnati Art Museum presents Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins (2016), an installation featuring an array of yellow gourds of various sizes adorned with black polka dots and surrounded by mirrors. The result is an immersive installation that allows the visitor to become part of the artwork as they seemingly enter an infinite field of glowing pumpkins.

All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins illustrates Kusama’s characteristic themes, including infinity and obsessive repetition. The artist has described the pumpkin—one of her quintessential symbols—as a form of self-portraiture. A rare assemblage of a dozen Pumpkin acrylic paintings on canvas made between 1990-2004 will also greet gallery visitors, courtesy of the Masterworks Foundation.

Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms are some of her most experimental and iconic works, often incorporating a variety of illuminated objects. Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965) was Kusama’s first installation to use mirrors to create a sense of endless space, featuring a floor covered in hundreds of red-spotted, white fabric-stuffed tubes. Kusama’s mirrored installations represented an innovative step in the emergence of an increasingly experiential practice. In each work, the visitor’s reflection seems to extend into infinity while they simultaneously have an intimate and individualized room experience. All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins draws on Kusama’s seminal pumpkin room, Mirror Room (Pumpkin) (1991), which was shown for the Japanese Pavilion at the 1993 Biennale Arte in Venice.

Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins is on loan from the Dallas Museum of Art.

Learn more at Cincinnati Art Museum.