Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room Coming to Cincinnati Art Museum This Summer

Few modern artists play with our perception like Yayoi Kusama. The acclaimed Japanese artist is known for her signature Infinity Mirror Rooms, which seem to recede out into an incalculable distance, far beyond the walls of the museum galleries that contain them.

This summer, the Cincinnati Art Museum hosts one of Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms for the first time. “Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” holds gourds of various sizes that are decorated with black polka dots and surrounded by mirrors. The immersive installation, which opens July 17, makes visitors feel as if they have stepped into a seemingly never-ending field of glowing pumpkins.

The exhibition reflects the themes of infinity and obsessive repetition that are hallmarks of Kusama’s work. She has described her pumpkins as a method of self-portraiture and they have become a consistent symbol in her art. A dozen Pumpkin acrylic paintings on canvas that Kusama made between 1990 and 2004 will also be on display.

“Emotional and neuroaesthetic wellbeing are ever present in Yayoi Kusama’s art,” museum director Cameron Kitchin said in an April 15 press release announcing the exhibition. “Cincinnati Art Museum is proud to bring her most essential immersive environment to our region ... Connecting communities and inspiring people at the art museum is exemplified by the unique mind and experience of Yayoi Kusama,”

Kusama’s Mirror Rooms are the most experimental and iconic works of her more than seven-decade career and often incorporate illuminated objects. The “Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field,” created in 1965, was the artist’s first installation to use mirrors to create a feeling of limitless space.

”Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” is on loan from the Dallas Museum of Art and will be on display in Cincinnati through Oct. 18. Tickets are $17 with discounted rates for students, children and seniors.

For more information, visit cincinnatiartmuseum.org.

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