Yayoi Kusama’s work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: Pop Art and Minimalism. Her highly influential career encompasses paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Yayoi Kusama has been the subject of solo and group presentations worldwide. She presented her first solo show in her native Japan in 1952. In the mid-1960s, she established herself as an important avant-garde artist in New York by staging groundbreaking and influential happenings, events, and exhibitions. Her work gained renewed widespread recognition in the late 1980s following several international solo exhibitions, including shows at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, both of which took place in 1989. She represented Japan in 1993 at the 45th Venice Biennale to critical acclaim. In 1998, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, co-organized Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968, which traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (1998-1999), and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan (1999).

In 2011-2012, her work was the subject of a large-scale retrospective that traveled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From 2012 through 2015, three major museum solo presentations of the artist’s work simultaneously traveled to major museums throughout Japan, Asia, and Central and South America. In 2015, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, organized a comprehensive overview of Kusama’s practice that traveled to Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Helsinki Art Museum. In 2017-2019, a major survey of the artist’s work, Infinity Mirrors, was presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Seattle Art Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of the Rainbow, which marked the first large-scale exhibition of Kusama’s work presented in Southeast Asia, opened at the National Gallery of Singapore in 2017 and traveled to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Jakarta. In 2019, All About Love Speaks Forever, an exhibition tailor-made specifically for the Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, included more than forty works by the artist.

A comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work was mounted at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2021), traveling to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2022). KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature was on view at The New York Botanical Garden in 2021. In 2022, several major exhibitions of the artist’s work opened, including Yayoi Kusama: DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art; Yayoi Kusama: My Soul Blooms Forever, Qatar Museums, Doha; and One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. A major retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, was on view from 2022 to 2023 at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, then traveled to Guggenheim Bilbao (2023) and Serralves Museum, Portugal (2024). Also in 2023, Yayoi Kusama - You, Me and the Balloons was on view at Aviva Studios, Manchester, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami presented the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: LOVE IS CALLING. The solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2024.

In 2023, a commissioned mosaic by Kusama, A Message of Love, Directly from My Heart unto the Universe (2022) was unveiled at the new Madison Concourse at Grand Central Station, New York, and will remain on permanent view.

Kusama has been represented by David Zwirner since 2013. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition with the artist, titled I Who Have Arrived in Heaven, was in 2013 and spanned all three spaces at West 19th Street in New York. Her second gallery solo show, Give Me Love, was held at David Zwirner in New York in 2015. Subsequent solo shows of the artist’s work at David Zwirner New York include Festival of Life, concurrently presented with Infinity Nets in 2017, and EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE in 2019. In 2021, David Zwirner, Victoria Miro, and Ota Fine Arts jointly presented I WANT YOUR TEARS TO FLOW WITH THE WORDS I WROTE in London, Tokyo, and New York. In 2023, at the gallery’s 19th Street location, the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with David Zwirner, Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, was on view.

Yayoi Kusama Museum, a space dedicated to the artist’s work, opened on October 1, 2017, in Tokyo with the inaugural exhibition Creation is a Solitary Pursuit, Love is What Brings You Closer to Art. The museum’s fourteenth exhibition devoted to her work, I WOULD OVERCOME DEATH AND GO ON LIVING, will be on view in October 2024.

Work by the artist is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, United Kingdom; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among numerous others. Kusama lives and works in Tokyo.