Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. From a young age, Kusama experienced visual and auditory hallucinations and began creating net and polka-dot pattern pictures. In 1957, she went to the United States and began making net paintings and soft sculptures, as well as organizing happenings and developing installations that made use of mirrors and lights, establishing herself as an avant-garde artist. Overcoming various obsessions, she discovered an artistic philosophy of self-obliteration via the obsessive repetition and multiplication of single motifs.
Kusama represented Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993, and lives and works in Tokyo, where the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in October 2017. Over the past decade there have been museum exhibitions of Kusama’s work touring the world in North and South America, Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, Australia, Russia, Mexico, Spain, England, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, Canada, Taiwan, Indonesia, Germany, and Israel. In 2016, Kusama received the Order of Culture, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Imperial Family. Kusama is the first woman to be honored with the prestigious medal for drawings and sculptures
