Tuesday 31 March 2009

Yayoi Kusama




I chanced upon an exhibition of hers whilst I was in Sydney. My God she sets my heart on fire! Coincidentally we share a birthday- she would give dear old Yoko Ono a run for her money and is quite possibly the coolest Octogenarian alive.

Her installations had such a visceral impact on me, I found myself being transported to a third dimension made up of garish, bubblegum dreamscapes that are inherently poetic and pure in origin. The inspiration for all her work came from a dried up river bed close to her familial home.  

She claimed to have had obsessive thoughts and compulsive tendencies as a child brought on by the physical and emotional abuse she experienced at the hand of her mother. She began to see the world as pixelated and kaleidoscopic perhaps as a way to detach herself from a reality that was oppressive and cruel.  




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