Image courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner.
Beginning July 17, Cincinnati Art Museum invites guests to view contemporary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s eclectic genius in its newest immersive exhibition, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins.
The exhibition notably features Kusama’s acclaimed Infinity Mirror Rooms, where visitors will be greeted by an array of glowing yellow gourds covered in polka dots amidst a backdrop of mirrors. The mirrors transform a perceptual experience, offering a kaleidoscopic illusion of being in an infinitely expanding field of pumpkins.
Visitors can expect to spend about 30 minutes queued to enter the mirror room, according to CAM’s website, during which they can view a collection of a dozen acrylic pumpkin paintings from Kusma’s collection from 1990 to 2004. Guests enter the room two at a time for one-and-a-half minutes, during which the doors will be closed for full immersive effect.
Kusama is a well-known avant-garde artist specializing in pop art, illusions, and minimalist techniques. Born in Japan in 1929, she was surrounded by gourds in her early childhood. She spent most of her time in her family’s greenhouse and seed nursery in rural, pre-war Matsumoto, a seemingly tranquil landscape that became the backdrop for her mental restlessness and the subject of her art.
Her mother was both physically and emotionally abusive, which Kusama attributes to frequent visual and aural hallucinations. She has endured a lifelong battle with mental health that ultimately led her to voluntarily live in a psychiatric hospital. Her art and fascination with repetition and infinite spaces have become her way of grappling with the anxiety she contends with on a daily basis.
“The pumpkin is something that she has returned to time and again, and has helped her to process those emotions, feelings, and complexities,” says Ainsley Cameron, curator of the exhibition. “Similarly, the idea of the repetition is a way that she has talked openly about dealing with the mental churning that she experiences. By repeating the form over and over again, she’s entering a meditative state in her artmaking, which helps calm her mind and hallucinations.”
The inclusion of Kusama’s work in CAM was the idea of Cameron Kitchin, Louis and Louise Dieterle Nipper director, in collaboration with Cameron, who had experienced the artist’s infinity rooms at a number of institutions in the past. The opportunity to display Kusama’s immersive art was one that Cincinnati had not yet attained as a feature exhibition until now.
“You really lose all concept of where you are, and it’s so rare, I think, in our society to do that, to radically fall mentally and physically and emotionally into art,” Cameron says.
Visitors will be prompted to think about the beyond through an evocative, timed experience that allows for two visitors at a time. That boundary is intentional, respecting both the artist’s wishes and preventing what might become an overwhelming experience when spending too long in an infinite field of textures and colors. The short experience is also intended to preserve Kusama’s concept of “self-obliteration,” where viewers are to lose themselves in a vast illusion. This intentionality was a factor CAM took into consideration when assembling the exhibition.
“The room can be disorienting when you’re in there—disorienting because you are enveloped by mirrors, and these lighted pumpkins on the ground that are reflected by mirrors on the ceiling and go off into infinity. Kusama is trying to make you think about the beyond: beyond your physical self, beyond your mental self, and universal awareness within these rooms,” Cameron explains.
This infinity room, out of all of Kusama’s works, is particularly special for its connections to the polka-dotted, glowing gourds that the artist has attributed to being representative of herself. She asserts in the literature and poetry she’s written that pumpkins evoke a poetic peace in her mind and that they talk to her. The result is that an abstract and arguably absurd artwork comes alive with Kusama’s personality as a reference to her self-identity.
“I hope that our visitors’ interests are piqued, and that they are curious about Kusama, her practice, and what she is doing within the contemporary art realm today. She’s still a living artist. She is a practicing artist,” Cameron says. Today, Kusama is 97 years old. “As a museum practitioner of ways that sort of take us out of our typical experience, to take us out of our day-to-day existence, that’s what this can do. I want people to walk out of that room with a bit of a reset. I hope it encourages people to manifest a joyful reality in similar ways that Kusama has created for herself and for us.”
Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins will be on display from July 17 to October 18 in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Gallery and Manuel and Rhoda Mayerson Gallery. Tickets are $17 and must be reserved in advance.
Facebook Comments