The artist’s breakthrough immersive installation, Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (Floor Show) (1965/2017) is presented here alongside one of her most recent Rooms, My Heart is Dancing Into the Universe (2018), offering visitors a glimpse into how these artworks have evolved over a half-century of innovation. 

 

Since the 1940s, Kusama has made work about pumpkins, which she considers unpretentious, solid, and spiritually balanced and which remind her of her childhood. The polka dot environment created for Pumpkin (2016) links two of Kusama’s sustained interests. 

 Visitors will experience Kusama’s distinctive vision of self-obliteration, a radical approach to connecting with others and the universe. Observing one’s body in the infinite space of a mirrored room or losing one’s sense of place by navigating a field of colorful lamps, the boundary between the self and the outside world is dissolved and visitors become one with everything around them, one with eternity. 

“The positive and negatives become one,” she says. “At that moment, I become obliterated.”

AKG members receive an array of benefits throughout the run of One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama including advance access (September 26–29), exclusive access to online reservations, and invitations to special events and programming. Additionally, the special exhibition admission fee will be waived for members at the Associate level and above.

One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama is organized at the Buffalo AKG by Associate Curator Andrea Alvarez. It was curated at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden by Assistant Curator Betsy Johnson in 2020.