Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929, currently resides and works in Tokyo, Japan

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. In 1948, she began her formal training in Nihonga, the tradition of Japanese painting, at the Kyoto City Specialist School of Arts. This early education shaped both the discipline of her practice and her sensitivity to form, which later developed into a distinct artistic language. Over the course of her career, Kusama has received major honors from various countries. These include the Asia Game Changer Award from Asia Society, United States, in 2023; the Person of Cultural Merit Award from the Government of Japan in 2009; the National Lifetime Achievement Award and the Order of the Rising Sun in 2006; the Praemium Imperiale for Painting from the Japan Art Association in 2006; and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government in 2003.

For more than seven decades, Kusama has exhibited continuously in both solo and group exhibitions. After moving to the United States in 1957, she developed large-scale paintings, soft sculptures, and immersive installations using mirrors and electric lights while also staging performance-based happenings during the late 1960s. Early milestones include her solo exhibition at Brata Gallery in New York in 1959 and the presentation of Narcissus Garden at the Venice Biennale in 1966. In 1993, Kusama was selected to represent Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale, marking renewed international recognition of her work. More recent exhibitions include Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now at M+, Hong Kong, from 2022 to 2023, and her solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, from 2024 to 2025.

Kusama’s practice is rooted in conceptual art and developed alongside the influences of minimalism, pop art, feminism, and surrealism. She works across a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, film, writing, and fashion. The Infinity Nets series, which began after her move to New York in 1958, remains a key body of work in her practice. For Kusama, repeated polka dots and nets are not only visual elements but also part of how she perceives space and continuity. Expanding from the surface of the work, these patterns evoke a sense of boundlessness that continues to shape her artistic thinking. Alongside the Infinity Nets, the pumpkin has become another recurring motif, connected to childhood memory and rendered in forms that are gentle, simple, and immediately recognizable.

Kusama’s work is held in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Modern in London. In Thailand, Infinity-Nets (Zsnhs), 2021, an acrylic on canvas measuring 100 x 100 cm, is included in the permanent collection of MOCA BANGKOK. After returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama began living in a care facility in Tokyo in 1977, while continuing to maintain a daily studio practice nearby.