Yayoi Kusama // Infinity Rooms

  • Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin Infinity Mirror Room installation, immersive mirrored space filled with glowing pumpkin sculptures and endless reflections.
    ©Lizzy Shaanan Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
    Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms are immersive installations that use mirrored walls, lights, and repeated forms to create the illusion of infinite space. First developed in the mid-1960s, they transformed her earlier experiments with obsessive repetition into participatory environments where viewers step directly into her vision of boundlessness. Throughout her career, Kusama has produced over twenty variations, ranging from walk-in chambers to enclosed boxes that reveal vast optical fields.
     
    Visually dazzling yet deeply personal, these works symbolise infinity and unity while reflecting Kusama’s lifelong struggles with mental health. By translating her hallucinations and inner turmoil into mirrored environments, she turned pain into beauty, dissolving the boundary between art and audience. Today, the Infinity Mirror Rooms remain among her most celebrated achievements, embodying both the spectacle of contemporary installation art and the healing potential of creative expression.
  • Ncysea, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

  • "By using mirrors, I was able to create an unlimited space and convey the feeling of infinity from my hallucinations."

     

     

    - Yayoi Kusama 

    Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms are filled with lights, lanterns, pumpkins, or reflective spheres that multiply endlessly through mirrored surfaces. Some incorporate pools of water, others suspend glowing orbs, while others rely on shifting LED sequences to create a sense of immersion. Each room is carefully constructed to blur the line between physical space and optical illusion, enveloping visitors in an environment that appears both vast and intimate.
    At their core, these works represent Kusama’s enduring themes of repetition, self-obliteration, and infinity. The mirrors extend patterns beyond the limits of the physical objects, dissolving boundaries between viewer and artwork. The dots, lights, and reflections symbolise both individuality and collective unity, while the sensation of endlessness mirrors the artist’s own hallucinatory visions. 
    • Yayoi Kusama installation with red spotted balls, immersive environment featuring polka dot patterns and mirrored reflections.
      ©M.Ahmadani, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
    • Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room installation with glowing LED lights, mirrored walls creating endless reflections in immersive darkened space.
      ©WendyAvilesR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
    • Yayoi Kusama installation with colourful polka dot patterns covering walls, floor and objects, immersive spotted environment.
      ©Lizzy Shaanan Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

  • “Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos.”

     

     — Yayoi Kusama

    Over time, she has produced more than 20 unique Infinity Rooms, each offering a different sensory experience. Highlights include Fireflies on the Water (2002), evoking the delicate flicker of light across a night sky; The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), which immerses viewers in a galaxy of shifting LEDs; and Chandelier of Grief (2016), where a rotating chandelier multiplies infinitely to unsettling effect. These works have become international sensations, exhibited at Tate Modern, MoMA, and the Hirshhorn Museum, drawing record-breaking audiences and cementing Kusama’s reputation as a pioneer of experiential art.

  • Exhibtions and Performance Art

    Exhibitions and performances that shaped Kusama’s legacy.     ©Lizzy Shaanan Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons