YAYOI KUSAMA - LIFE IS THE HEART OF A RAINBOW

Hello! This summer I travelled to Singapore for six weeks visiting family and exploring a vibrant and multi cultural city. The first day we had planned was to see the much talked about 'Yayoi Kusama' exhibition.

This shows focuses on the immersive and expansive nature of her practice. Kusama's creative vision was shown through paintings, sculptures, and installations from the 1950s to the present.

The exhibition traces the development of her key motifs and exploration of colour, form and space.

It then culminates in a series of spectacular installations and large scale paintings that transform the galleries and public spaces.

Narcissus Garden

This garden in the City Hall Chamber was made up of 1,500 stainless-steel balls distributed around the hall in clusters.

The shiny balls reflected multiple images of the viewer back at himself, in an echo of the legend of Narcissus, the proud, beautiful boy who was punished by the goddess Nemesis for his vanity. She lured him to a pool where he fell in love with his own reflection and pined to death.

Kusama first installed this work at the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966, which caused an uproar as she had not been invited to exhibit. She put up a sign at the exhibit "YOUR NARCISSIUM FOR SALE" and sold each ball for US$2 to passers-by.

By looking at these varied art concepts it inspires me to see what I can create with my photography. The use of patterns, sculpture, art installations and framing of prints are all aspects to be thought of to broaden my artistic pathway.

The main aspects of the exhibition I was excited to see was the Infinity Mirror Room, The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended Into The Heavens, Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict and the Narcissus Garden.

These were exciting to see because they were renowned all over the world and it was brilliant to see how all of these pieces were constructed over four designated areas in the National Gallery of Singapore.

The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended Into The Heavens

Infinity Mirror Room

Infinity Mirror Room

The pumpkin is a favourite Kusama motif, inspired by her childhood growing up in a plant seed nursery. Her pumpkins are often neon bright and decorated with polka dots, another instantly identifiable Kusama motif.

This work marries three of her recurring themes: pumpkins and polka dots, in an infinity room. The yellow-and-black dotted room has a mirrored cube in the middle and when you peer in, glowing pumpkins stretch into mirrored infinity.

A Kusama show often has an infinity room - a small, dark, mirrored space with glowing lights. While the basic concept stays the same, the rooms have evolved thanks to technology, and possibly legal considerations.

The first infinity room this writer visited in Japan's Mori Art Museum in the 1990s was completely, blindingly pitch black and had strings of red Christmas lights that pulsed and faded to a heartbeat rhythm. Over the years, the infinity rooms have become merely dim, with visible pathways through the space and LED lights that twinkle, dim and even change colours.

Throughout Kusama's work the polka dot is a recurring motif highlighting these to childhood hallucinations where she began seeing dots all around her, and uses them in various ways to symbolise an erasure of the self to the point of being integrated with the environment. Notions of the self and identity are constantly evoked, most notably in a process she terms “self obliteration”, reflected by the nets and dots she so often covers her works in.

In exhibitions like these, her persistence in taking control of her own narrative and telling it in all its complexity becomes even more apparent. Her difficult childhood, her struggles with mental health, her ambivalence towards sex, and her challenges of being a woman are all poured into her work.

Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict

This video installation captures Kusama in a synthetic bright red wig and one of her signature polka dotted outfits, singing a song about her experiences with depression. With her thousand-yard stare and flat delivery, this was an unsettling work that highlighted the deeply personal nature of her art practice.

As the latest evolution of Yayoi’s work, this final gallery feels like it captures the artist at this exact point in time: strange yet familiar, larger-than-life yet intimate, pulsing with energy yet infused with a peculiar stillness.

Yayoi instinctively understands that space where image-making intersects with authenticity, the power of laying yourself bare while controlling your own narrative. Whether seven decades ago when she first entered the art world or today, there is still something seductively radical about that.

#Photography #Art #Blog #Exhibition #Singapore #Mixedmedia