Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist known for her avant-garde and innovative work in various mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, and performance art. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama’s artistic career began in the 1950s when she moved to New York City and became associated with the avant-garde art scene.

Kusama is best known for her immersive installations featuring repetitive patterns, polka dots, and vibrant colors. Her work often explores themes of infinity, obliteration, and the interconnectedness of all things. She has also gained recognition for her “Infinity Mirror Rooms,” which create an illusion of endless space through the use of mirrors and lights.

Throughout her career, Kusama has been open about her struggles with mental health and has used art as a form of therapy and self-expression. Her work has received widespread acclaim internationally, and she is regarded as one of the most influential contemporary artists of her generation. Kusama’s impact extends beyond the art world, influencing fashion, design, and popular culture.

Yayoi Kusama Quotes

1. “My life is a dot lost among thousands of other dots.”
— Yayoi Kusama

2. “I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.”
— Yayoi Kusama

3. “I am just another dot in the world.”
— Yayoi Kusama

4. “Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art.”
— Yayoi Kusama

5. “I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned.”
— Yayoi Kusama

6. “Polka dots can’t stay alone. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots we become part of the unity of our environments.”
— Yayoi Kusama

7. “I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland.”
— Yayoi Kusama

8. “The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this ‘obliteration.’”
— Yayoi Kusama

9. “I want to become more famous, even more famous.”
— Yayoi Kusama

10. “I think I will be able to, in the end, rise above the clouds and climb the stairs to heaven, and I will look down on my beautiful life.”
— Yayoi Kusama

11. “I have a flood of ideas in my mind. I just follow my vision.”
— Yayoi Kusama

12. “I believe that eyes are very important motifs. Thats something that can discern the peace and love.”
— Yayoi Kusama

13. “All of my works are steps on my journey, a struggle for truth that I have waged with pen, canvas, and materials. Overhead is a distant, radiant star, and the more I stretch to reach it, the further it recedes. But by the power of my spirit and my single-hearted pursuit of the path, I have clawed my way through the labyrinthine confusion of the world of people in an unstinting effort to approach even one step closer to the realm of the soul.”
— Yayoi Kusama

14. “The machinery of the sky that confounds us on earth with endless transformations of clouds in the light of dawn does not compare to the extraordinary tenacity of human beings, the way of human life, the presentiment of approaching death, the existence of love, the brilliant coruscations of light and the dark scars of our lives, to say nothing of the incomprehensible form of the cosmos and the overwhelming mysteries of space, time, distance.”
— Yayoi Kusama

15. “Creating art and writing novels and poems are simply different roads I have chosen in my search for truth.”
— Yayoi Kusama