Yayoi Kusama // Exhibtions and Performance Art

  • Throughout her career, Yayoi Kusama has exhibited widely across the globe, cementing her position as one of the most influential...
    ©Lizzy Shaanan Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

    Throughout her career, Yayoi Kusama has exhibited widely across the globe, cementing her position as one of the most influential contemporary artists of her time. She first gained attention in the late 1950s and 1960s in New York, where her solo shows introduced audiences to her pioneering Infinity Net paintings and immersive installations.

     

    Major international breakthroughs followed, including her unauthorised yet iconic Narcissus Garden at the 1966 Venice Biennale. In subsequent decades, her work has been celebrated in landmark exhibitions at institutions such as MoMA, Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum, and the Hirshhorn Museum, often drawing record-breaking visitor numbers. These shows have played a crucial role in shaping Kusama’s global reputation, with her Infinity Mirror Room installations becoming cultural phenomena that bridge fine art and mass audiences.

  • “My work is a form of self-therapy, but it is also a message to the world: we are all part of infinity.”

     — Yayoi Kusama

    From provocative happenings in 1960s New York to blockbuster Infinity Room exhibitions in the 21st century, Kusama has consistently used performance and installation to transform the act of viewing into an experience of immersion, reflection, and infinity. Her exhibitions remain some of the most visited and talked about in contemporary art, confirming her as a pioneer who turned the exhibition itself into a form of performance.

  • Narcissus Garden

    1966 Venice Biennale     © Josep from BHz, Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Yayoi Kusama’s participation in the 1966 Venice Biennale marked a defining moment in her artistic trajectory. Although she was not...
    ©Album / Alamy.
    Yayoi Kusama’s participation in the 1966 Venice Biennale marked a defining moment in her artistic trajectory. Although she was not an officially invited artist, she boldly staged her unauthorised performance Narcissus Garden on the lawn outside the Italian Pavilion. The installation consisted of 1,500 mirrored spheres arranged on the grass, each priced at $2, which Kusama sold directly to visitors while wearing a striking golden kimono. By transforming the prestigious Biennale into a site of performance and commerce, she challenged the art world’s systems of value and spectatorship.
     
    The mirrored balls reflected the faces of viewers, implicating them in the work and highlighting the tension between self-image, consumer culture, and artistic experience. This provocative intervention captured international attention and established Kusama as a daring and original voice within the global art scene. In the years that followed, Narcissus Garden was restaged at institutions such as MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Hirshhorn Museum, reinforcing its status as one of the most significant conceptual gestures of the twentieth century.

  • Read More about her exhibtions

  • Prints and Multiples

    Explore Kusama’s prints.

  • Originals

    Explore Kusama Originals