I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. I, myself, delight in my obsessions.'Yayoi Kusama is one of the most significant contemporary artists at work today. This engaging autobiography tells the story of her life and extraordinary career in her own words, revealing her as a fascinating figure and maverick artist who channels her obsessive neuroses into an art that transcends cultural barriers. Kusama describes the decade she spent in New York, first as a poverty stricken artist and later as the doyenne of an alternative counter-cultural scene. She provides a frank and touching account of her relationships with key art-world figures, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Donald Judd and the reclusive Joseph Cornell, with whom Kusama forged a close bond. In candid terms she describes her childhood and the first appearance of the obsessive visions that have haunted her throughout her life. Returning to Japan in the early 1970s, Kusama checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she resides to the present day, emerging to dedicate herself with seemingly endless vigour to her art and her writing. This remarkable autobiography provides a powerful insight into a unique artistic mind, haunted by fears and phobias yet determined to maintain her position at the forefront of the artistic avant-garde. In addition to her artwork, Yayoi Kusama is the author of numerous volumes of poetry and fiction, including The Hustler's Grotto of Christopher Street, Manhattan Suicide Addict and Violet Obsession.

Victoria Miro inaugurates its new Mayfair gallery with a presentation of recent white 'Infinity Net' paintings by Yayoi Kusama. It is the first time Kusama has exclusively shown white 'Infinity Nets' in Europe and in its select concentration on these iconic works the exhibition recalls Kusama's debut solo show in New York at the Brata Gallery in October 1959.00Exhibition: Victorio Miro Gallery, London, UK (2013).

In a unique style that is both sensory and utopian, Yayoi Kusama’s work possesses a highly personal character, yet one that has connected profoundly with large audiences around the globe. Throughout her career she has been able to break down traditional barriers between work, artist, and spectator. Kusama’s work—which spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures—has transcended some of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century, including pop art and minimalism. Conveying extraordinary vitality and passion, her work seems to encompass an autobiographic, even confessional dimension. As stated by Roberta Smith in The New York Times, “These paintings form a great big infinity room of their own, but one in which each part is also an autonomous work of art, its own piece of wobbly, handwrought infinity. You may not want to know these paintings Ms. Kusama has made, but in the moment their vitality is infectious. It is the vitality of an artist who lives to work, whose work keeps her alive.” Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life documents the artist’s exhibition at David Zwirner’s Chelsea location in New York in late 2017, featuring a selection of paintings from her iconic My Eternal Soul series, new large-scale flower sculptures, a polka-dotted environment, and two Infinity Mirror Rooms. The monograph includes new scholarship on the artist by Jenni Sorkin, as well as a special foldout poster.

Within a few years, Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) has become a favourite of Louisiana’s guests because of her Gleaming Lights of the Souls installation at the museum – a mirror-lined room with hundreds of lamps in various colours that give the viewer a cosmic sensation of being in an infinite space. But with a career spanning six decades, Kusama is much more than this. She came onto the art scene almost as a woman counterpart to Andy Warhol in New York in the 1960s, where she expressed herself in a mixture of art, fashion and happenings. Since then, her striking visual language and constant artistic innovation have rightfully earned her a position as one of today’s most prominent artists. Louisiana’s exhibition of Kusama tells the full story of this Japanese artist who with prodigious productivity has created an entire world unto itself, in which color, patterns and movement together bear witness to her fascination with the infinite. The Louisiana exhibition unfurls the whole of Kusama’s life’s work: from early watercolours and pastels to her ground-breaking paintings and sculptures from the 1960s, psychedelic films, performances, installations and political happenings in the 1960s and the early 1970s, as well as shedding new light on works from the 1980s, after the artist’s return to Tokyo. Also on show exhibition are several of Kusama’s recent installations, and a series of new paintnings by the 86-year-old Kusama, created especially for Louisiana’s exhibition. The exhibition is the first Kusama retrospective to take into account the artist’s interest in fashion and design but also includes several important works from her early period that have never before been exhibited. 00Exhibition: Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark (17.9.2015 - 24.1.2016).

Yayoi Kusama tells the story of her life and career giving an insight into her unique artistic mind, her relationships with key art-world figures, haunted by fears and phobias and yet determined to maintain her position at the forefront of the avant-garde.