Video // Yayoi Kusama’s Self Obliteration.

Click here to watch embedded video.

In this video by Argentinian director Martín Rietti, 84-year-old Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama talks about her life at the mercy of her art. Kusama spent 15 years in New York in 60s and 70s, before returning to Tokyo where she has been living voluntarily in a psychiatric clinic since 1977.

“When I was a child I experienced this state of self-obliteration, so I painted the same motif endlessly. When I was painting I found the same pattern on the ceiling, stairs and windows, like they were all over. So I went close and tried to touch them. Then they started to come up my arm as well. It was horrible but not it’s over, almost.”

See previous post about The Obliteration Room by Yayoi Kusama at GoMA in Brisbane on Yellowtrace.

[Film by Martín Rietti, courtesy of Nowness.]