The piece is a dark room lined with mirrors on every surface and strands of looping LED lighting suspended from the ceiling. This deceptively small room feels as if it’s a vast, infinite galaxy of lighting and allows the viewer to enter and be surrounded, or obliterated by Kusama’s fireflies.
Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room explores the psychedelic sensations of the ‘self’ and the artist’s ongoing hallucinations that started when she was a child. In this work, Kusama’s repetitive and extensive use of polka dots, mirrors, and LED lights explores infinite repetition and encourages you to ‘obliterate’ your personality and become one with eternity.
Yayoi Kusama, You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies, 2005. Mixed media installation with LED lights. Collection of Phoenix Art Museum, Museum purchase with funds provided by Jan and Howard Hendler.
A pioneer of perceptual experiences, Kusama expresses a complex balance between her psychological obsessions and her aesthetic control over them. In the late 1950s, she left Japan for New York City. Her work spans paintings, performances, installations, sculptures, films, fashion, and literary works. They transcended the Pop and Minimalist movements of the twentieth century and reflect the mind-altering spirituality of hippie culture.
Yayoi Kusama: You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies is made possible through the generosity of donors to the Museum’s annual fund.
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