Yayoi Kusama // Galaxy, 1991

  • Galaxy, 1991. Acrylic on canvas, 117 × 91 cm. A large-scale painting exploring Kusama’s central themes of infinity and the cosmos through obsessive repetition and luminous colour.
    Galaxy, 1991
    Acrylic on canvas, 117 × 91 cm (46 1/8 × 35 7/8 in.)
    © Yayoi Kusama. Image reproduced for educational and informational purposes only. 
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    Painted in 1991, Galaxy reflects Kusama’s lifelong fascination with infinity and the cosmos. The subject aligns with her practice of translating inner visions into compositions that evoke both microscopic detail and celestial scale. The surface of the canvas, structured through repeated marks and luminous colour, becomes a symbolic universe, bridging the psychological with the cosmic.
     
    This period marked a renewed international recognition for Kusama, as her signature themes of accumulation, obsession, and infinity found new resonance with global audiences. In Galaxy, she expands her visual language beyond domestic objects and organic motifs to encompass the vastness of outer space, reaffirming her ability to universalise private vision into imagery that speaks to human experience as a whole.

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

     – Yayoi Kusama

    The painting demonstrates how Kusama’s art often blurs boundaries between the inner and outer worlds, transforming deeply personal obsessions into metaphors that resonate on a universal scale. What begins as an act of repetitive mark-making, rooted in her own psychological experience, expands outward to suggest continuity, eternity, and the vast interconnectedness of all things. In Galaxy, the interplay of colour and pattern evokes both the endlessness of the cosmos and the immersive quality of her inner visions, reminding viewers that the intimate and the infinite are inseparable in her practice.