On tuesday I went to the press viewing of the brilliant new Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern. Showing over six decades of Kusama’s works across 14 rooms, there is a sampling of everything from painting, sculpture and collage to film and installation.
The standout rooms are definitely the “environments” I’m Here, but Nothing (a small furnished room covered in hundreds of glowing stickers under a black light) and the aptly named Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of life. At the risk of sounding incredibly overdramatic – it was beautiful, magical and made me feel like I wanted to have a small joyful cry. The photos and the short shaky video below don’t come close to showing how epic it is and I can’t seem to describe how it felt without making it sound like something from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. So if you can, go and experience it for yourself. The whole exhibition gives an excellent overview of Kusama’s prolific body of work and is definitely worth a visit (though if you have cluster phobia then you might want to take room 10 at some speed and with eyes averted!)
The exhibition opens today and runs until the 5th of June.
Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern from Kris Atomic on Vimeo.
(photos/video/ illustration by me)
