Cosmic Nature: Yayoi Kusama
There has never been anything moderate in the practice of legendary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Driven by childhood trauma, obsessive creative explorations and ambition, at the heart of Yayoi Kusama’s work is the natural world and the cosmic force that fuels all life. This central tenet of her practice is explored – in art and nature – for the first time at New York Botanical Garden.
Image credit: Portrait of Yayoi Kusama, Flower Obsession (Sunflowers), 2000, Video Still. Courtesy the artist © Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama’s immersion in the natural world has possessed her aesthetic since she was a child, with nature and our place in the universe intrinsic to her artistic explorations. Her work is prominent all over the world – a deep yellow pumpkin covered with black dots beckons across the Seto Inland Sea from the end of a pier on Japan’s Naoshima, mirrored balls reflect a watery environment in her Narcissus Garden, the Infinity Net paintings nudge the existential edges of our consciousness. Each of these unique experiences draw us toward the minutiae integral to the natural world.
Yet the connection with nature in Kusama’s practice had not been explored in depth until KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature opened at New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) early in 2021. With an outdoor exhibition featuring four new experiences and other works situated within the garden’s varied spaces, it sheds light on the central platform underpinning all of her work. In its scope, it exposes the strength of the cosmic quality her artwork summons, an aspect of her aesthetic that inspires us to literally extend ourselves, to look towards an ineffable quality so often beyond ordinary reach.
Cosmic Nature is the most recent in a program of NYBG exhibitions that has focused on artists with a connection to the natural world, including Henry Moore, Claude Monet, Frida Kahlo and Dale Chihuly. In a message shared with NYBG on March 6, 2021, prior to the exhibition’s April opening, Kusama wrote: “Dancing through our universe are noble souls whose magnificent forms are saturated ...Subscribe to read this article in full
