7/3/2023 0 Comments Obliteration room yayoi kusamaSpeaking from my mother’s witness (I was always too afraid to upset my grandmother such triggering questions), yet another testament to the strictness of Japanese parents is demonstrated by how after years of estrangement, my grandmother would receive two one-way plane tickets to Japan every year-a gesture that offered both hope for reconciliation and a bitter reminder that my grandmother and mother were welcome to return to the family, but the man she loved would never be. Even if one managed to step outside the boundaries, like my grandmother, they were severely sanctioned and often excommunicated from their family. Having grown up with a Japanese grandmother who-far from traditional-refused an arranged marriage and left her home to live her life as she chose and marry my American grandfather, I am well acquainted with the ways in which socially-instituted gender roles in mid-century Japan were nearly inescapable. To reframe Nochlin’s question, why have there been no great Asian women artists? Up until Yayoi Kusama’s recent rise to fame, many probably would not have been able to name one Asian woman artist, and this is because the strict enforcement of gender roles in Asian culture denies women’s access to art by restricting their freedom of expression. In her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Linda Nochlin asks why we cannot name a “great” woman artist and examines the issues preventing women from entering and achieving status in the Western art world (Nochlin 1971). Her family, however, dismissed her enthusiasm for art-making at a young age, seeking to lead her down the traditional path of Japanese housewifedom instead (Tate 2012). Born in 1929 in the mountainous region of Matsumoto in central Japan, Yayoi Kusama was the youngest daughter of a financially well-off family, which made their living from agriculture by cultivating plant seeds. ![]() Pencil sketch of her mother reflecting early use of her famous dot motif.įrom giant pumpkin sculptures to pumpkin light installations pumpkin to pumpkin paintings made entirely out of polka dots, Yayoi Kusama repeatedly reimagines pumpkins in her work as a method of preserving and symbolically revisiting to her childhood in Japan and her struggle to become a professional artist. ‘All the Eternal Love I have for the Pumpkins’: The Early Years (1929-1957) Beyond the selfie, Yayoi Kusama’s work communicates her feminist, anti-war, political and social ideologies, as well as her personal experiences with identity, mental illness, war, sexism, sexuality, spirituality, life and death through the cultural consciousness afforded by her Japanese and American lives. Her art has transcended traditional boundaries of art reception via the cultural mass production of selfies, yet these behind-the-screen snaps fail to capture the metaphysical nature of her work only accessible if experienced in person. ![]() Likely the first artist to implement a 30 second selfie-rule after a selfie-taker damaged her exhibit, social media has made Yayoi Kusama a millennial household name (Dazed Magazine 2017). ![]() Infinite Kusama: Intersectional Feminist, Avant-Garde Artist, Author-Poet, Socio-Political Activist, Mental-Health Advocate, VisionaryĪfter nearly 70 years of making art, Yayoi Kusama’s captivating light installations, polka-dotted paintings, sculptures, photographs and performance art are finally gracing galleries internationally and receiving unprecedented media attention for their dramatic visual and introspective qualities unlike anything the world has seen before.
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