Yayoi Kusama

During her prolific life in art, the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has continuously reinvented her practice. It encompasses an astonishing variety of media and styles, but her characteristically obsessive use of dot patterns is a recurrent feature. Kusama’s unique visual language refers to the time in her childhood when she began drawing while dealing with psychotic visions. Nonetheless, her practice has always been oriented outward, expressing a strong social consciousness. In the 1960s, she staged anti-war demonstrations in New York and organised various performances and happenings in Europe that explored the boundaries of identity, aiming to liberate people sexually and politically. Documented by Belgian and Dutch photographers, Kusama’s projects from that period show her links with the Zero Group.

The artist’s presence in Antwerp was marked by her first solo exhibition in Europe at Galerie Dorekens in 1962. Furthermore, she received the first prize at the Knokke International Festival of Experimental Film in 1968. When she moved back to Japan in the 1970s, she also focused on writing rooted in the surrealist literary tradition. Kusama’s novels form part of M HKA & The Book Lovers’ collection of artists’ novels.