I WOULD OVERCOME DEATH AND GO ON LIVING
2015
© YAYOI KUSAMA

Title

I WOULD OVERCOME DEATH AND GO ON LIVING

Dates

Thursday, October 17, 2024 – Sunday, March 9, 2025

All tickets must be purchased in advance online. Entry is timed and only valid for a specific 90-minute time slot.
Please purchase tickets in advance from here.

Yayoi Kusama has constantly faced the critical realities of life and death as pressing issues. Her experience of the Pacific War in a complex family environment, along with her overcoming of suicidal impulses triggered by trauma and neurosis through her creative practices, has influenced her perception of these issues. This exhibition unveils Kusama’s evolving outlook on life and death, alongside the corresponding shifts in her artistic presentation, through a series of diverse works—from her 1940s and 1950s paintings, which bear the imprint of war, to her very latest pieces.

After relocating to the United States in 1957, Kusama gained a reputation for her net paintings and sculptures that embody ‘self-obliteration’: the feeling of losing the boundary between the self and the other through the obsessive repetition of motifs originating from her hallucinations. In her anti-war happenings in the late 1960s, she painted dots onto the human body using the same concept of ‘self-obliteration’ while also highlighting the beauty of life and the human body. During the 1970s and 80s, following the loss of her father and her lover, as well as her return to Japan due to health issues, Kusama produced numerous dark-toned collages and three-dimensional works centered on the theme of death, as well as poetry and novels imbued with a sense of mortality. As she continued creating fantastical works exploring death and the afterlife, her works from the late 1980s began to explore themes of transmigration and cyclical returns to eternity through ‘self-obliteration’. Kusama’s works, which increasingly incorporated more colors, reveal how her creative process evolved from a means of coping with death to becoming synonymous with her very existence. In her painting series from 2000 onwards, Kusama has been relentlessly depicting the beauty of life and the joy of living on canvases overflowing with vibrant colors, driven by the ever-looming presence of her own death.

L: Lingering Dream 1949
© YAYOI KUSAMA
R: Kusama with her soft sculpture works at the solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Obsessional Art: A Requiem for Death and Life, Painting, Sculpture and Objects 1976
Photo:Shigeo Anzaï
©Estate of Shigeo Anzaï, Courtesy of Zeit-Foto

L: Flame of Life- Dedicated to Tu-Fu Private Collection 1988
R: Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict 2010
© YAYOI KUSAMA

NEWS

The museum is closed on August 16, 2024

The museum will be closed on August 16, due to the approaching typhoon conditions.
For those who have admission tickets of August 16, we will contact you via a registered e-mail address shortly.
Thank you so much for your understanding.

About the museum's opening on August 16, 2024

The museum may be closed on August 16, 2024 due to the approaching typhoon conditions.
The latest information on the museum’s opening of the days will be updated on our website.

Regarding on NFT works circulating on the blockchain network "KUSAMA"

Please note that the blockchain network "KUSAMA," the NFT platforms such as "Singular" that sell NFT works using the blockchain network "KUSAMA," the NFT works circulating on those NFT platforms, and any other projects related to the blockchain network "KUSAMA" have nothing to do with Yayoi Kusama. Please note that all those projects are in no way related to Yayoi Kusama, nor are they licensed by her or the Yayoi Kusama Foundation in any way.
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama Foundation

Regarding an NFT sale case of JNCA using Yayoi Kusama's name and image of Kusama’s artwork (March 15, 2022 update)/ 關於近期JNCA使用草間彌生名義以及草間彌生作品製成NFT商品并計劃進行銷售的行爲的聲明(2022年3月15日更新)

Please be advised that Yayoi Kusama and Yayoi Kusama Foundation are in no way affiliated with JNCA (Japan NFT Culture Association). The NFT products created by JNCA using Yayoi Kusama's name and image of Kusama’s artwork are in no way associated with Yayoi Kusama or Yayoi Kusama Foundation. The copyright of the artwork used to create the NFT products belongs to Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama has never licensed or granted any kind of permission to JNCA regarding any kind of use of this artwork. Similarly, the permission to use the logo of Yayoi Kusama Museum, regardless of whole or part, has never been granted to JNCA.
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama Foundation

敬請注意,JNCA(一般社團法人日本NFT文化協會)使用草間彌生名義及作品圖像出品的NFT商品與草間彌生及草間彌生紀念藝術財團無任何關係。JNCA計劃銷售的NFT商品中使用了草間彌生的作品的圖像,該作品的著作權歸屬於草間彌生本人。草間彌生未曾授以該作品的包括著作權在内的任何權利于JNCA進行任何形式的使用。JNCA進行的銷售及宣傳活動中部分使用了草間彌生美術館的logo,此行爲亦未經我方允許及授權。
草間彌生
草間彌生紀念藝術財團