YAYOI KUSAMA
Infinity net
Yayoi Kusama (Matsumoto, Japan, 1929) had a difficult childhood, but managed to overcome all types of adversities with the goal of fulfilling her dream of becoming an artist. In her paintings, installations and sculptures, Yayoi transmits the visions that beset her. On 8 October the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum is organising one of the biggest retrospectives of this legendary artist, exhibiting nearly 200 works.
text César Mateu Moyà
The word singular acquires a new connotation when we refer to Yayoi Kusama. Her work is the reflection of her life story, one that is marked by a difficult childhood and a maturity of survival, on the quest to fulfil her goal of becoming an artist.
As a small child, she was subjected to abuse and humiliation by her mother - “In front of the servants, she would say, ‘when you have four children, one of them can always turn into utter trash’, in reference to me”, she recounts in her autobiography, Infinity Net. Her mother never accepted the fact that her daughter was an artist.
Making mistakes doesn’t matter, what does matter is continuing on your quest, Kusama must have thought; she arrived in the United States in 1957 “without speaking a word of English”. At first she landed in Seattle, and [...]
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