Profile
草間彌生（くさまやよい、1929年-）は長野県松本市出身の現代美術家。幼少期の強迫的幻視を芸術に昇華し、ニューヨーク前衛芸術の旗手として活躍。水玉模様と「無限の鏡の部屋」で知られ、現在も精神科病院隣接のアトリエで毎日創作を続ける、現存する最も影響力のある芸術家の一人。
Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. From early childhood, she suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive symptoms, including vivid visual and auditory hallucinations — flowers appeared to speak to her, and dot and net patterns multiplied endlessly across every surface. To cope with these terrifying visions, she began drawing them compulsively, covering paper after paper with dots and nets. For Kusama, making art was not a choice but a survival strategy.
In 1957, she moved to the United States, eventually settling in New York City. There, working in near-poverty, she produced the “Infinity Net” paintings — vast, monochromatic canvases covered with obsessive, interlocking loops — and pioneered immersive environments, including her iconic infinity mirror rooms. Her 1960s Happenings, in which participants were painted with polka dots, broke social taboos and challenged the conventions of the art world. She became known as the “Queen of the Avant-Garde.” She returned to Japan in 1973 and, in 1977, voluntarily entered a psychiatric facility in Tokyo, where she has lived ever since, walking to her nearby studio each day to paint.
In 1993, Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, marking the start of her extraordinary international revival. Major retrospectives followed at Tate Modern (2012) and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and her infinity mirror rooms became some of the most visited and photographed art installations in the world. The Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo in 2017. Today, well into her nineties, she continues to paint every day — an unbroken creative life spanning more than eight decades.