I love the work of Yayoi Kusama! She is very interesting as a person due to her life experiences and how she deals with them through her art. Her work has similarities with mine and i keep referring to her throughout my work in some way or another.
In one of the interviews she was asked whether her art was a kind of an art therapy, in which she replied "It's a self-therapy". Having struggled her entire life with hallucinations and depersonalization she uses the process of making her work as an escape for her anxieties. I find it very interesting how she turned art to something for herself and something safe for her to do to escape the struggles that she faces. I have studied Yayoi for a long time now and i thought very hard about how we are similar and different and recently discovered that i too try to escape from something. It is getting more and more obvious in my work and the process i choose in making art.
I try to escape time by looking into repetition of marks or find a process of making work that has repetition in it, where i can get lost in time and just focus on the process of making work. I yet have to find out why i want to escape time but right now i know that i want my art to be as a self-therapy too, as i feel complete and happy when in process of making art. Yayoi has a lot of repetition in her work that i like and she loves to expand beyond the canvas which is another similarity between us. There is something about a never ending canvas that is appealing, maybe because it doesn't have a start or an end. She uses color in a very clever way depending on how she feels. The piece that stands out to me the most is the piece called Infinity Nets 1961.
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Kusama with a ten-metre net painting, Stephen Radich Gallery, New York, 1961 |
Its a large scale piece of work and when i look at it i can see the struggles of anxieties she has faced though the way each repeated mark changed subtly showing her state at the time and how it affected her. It must have taken absolutely ages to do it and i admire her for it. I love big scale work and this piece links very well with a piece that i have made last year which also required endurance but in a different kind of way.
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| My floor piece |
I think when you repeat something whether it be a pattern or not, you involve yourself in the process of repetition and the movement of making it, forgetting about time and worries that you have. And doing so in large quantities it becomes meditative, relaxing and familiar. Your escape.
Yayoi Kusama is a very interesting artist to me and i can talk about her all day long and not get tired of it. She has a good variety of work in different mediums that i love and she produces some strange work but i understand it in my own way. I also love how she includes herself in her artwork by wearing the pattern of the work. It shows how they are united.
“I work as much as fifty to sixty hours at a stretch," Kusama wrote in a 1961 article of her entrancing, utterly consuming creative process. "I gradually feel myself under the spell of the accumulation and repetition in my nets which expand beyond myself, and over the limited space of canvas, covering the floor, desks and everywhere.”
― Yayoi Kusama
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