Yayoi Kusama’s infinity mirror rooms are world famous. Art lovers are obsessed with them just as the whole Instagram influencers club is. Her installations are beautifully trippy. And we are about to get more, as the Tate Modern hosts Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms from 14 June this year.
This year-long, focused exhibition showcases these much-loved works by one of the most celebrated artists working today. It is a rare chance to experience two major installations alongside fascinating early documentation of Kusama’s experimental performances and events, as well as a brand-new sculptural work that continues the theme of endless replication. We’re getting it all with this one.
The exhibition features Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life, one of Kusama’s largest installations to date and originally created for her 2012 retrospective at Tate Modern.
In this immersive work, mirrored walls and a shallow pool of water endlessly multiply a constellation of tiny, suspended lights to create a feeling of infinite space. This is shown alongside Chandelier of Grief, another whole-room installation in which the viewer disappears into a seemingly boundless universe of rotating chandeliers.
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Visitors will also be able to experience The Universe as Seen from the Stairway to Heaven 2021, Kusama’s brand new ‘peep in’ sculpture, which has been created especially for this exhibition.
Deploying both mirrors and the colourful ‘dot’ motif, it recalls the iconic early work Kusama’s Peep Show or Endless Love Show 1966. The work demonstrates Kusama’s life-long obsession with concept of infinite repetition, exploiting the formal properties of mirrors to create the illusion of limitless space.
An accompanying display of film and photography – some on show for the very first time – provides historical context for the global phenomenon that Kusama’s mirror rooms have become today. This goes far beyond the small installations we have seen across London in the past. It’s time to celebrate Yayoi Kusama in all her infinite glory.
Feature Image: Yayoi Kusama’s Chandelier of Grief 2016/2018
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