Mika Yoshitake:
Determined to make herself known, Kusama was keen to explore different means of expression. She even started her own fashion brand. Here, you’ll find costumes she made for her body painting performances. You can also watch documentation of some of these performances playing on monitors on the other side of this room.
In addition to creating paintings and sculptures, Kusama began staging radical performances in the late 1960s, when she lived in New York City. The locations ranged from the Museum of Modern Art to other more unusual locations like Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. It was around the time that the anti-Vietnam war and hippie movement swept over the United States. The themes of human connection and universal love evident in Kusama’s work resonated with the calls for peace and equality echoing from the counterculture.
In an open letter protesting the American war in Vietnam addressed to US president Richard Nixon, Kusama writes, ‘Our earth is like one little polka dot, among millions of other celestial bodies, one orb full of hatred and strife amid the peaceful, silent spheres. Let’s you and I change all that and make this world a new Garden of Eden . . . You can’t eradicate violence by using more violence.’
Kusama’s performances attracted fervent young participants. Costumed in these provocative tunics, their bodies appeared liberated from gender conventions and other social norms. Buoyed by the media attention and public hype her performances received, Kusama soon ventured into fashion merchandising. At one time she revealed that her designs were sold in four hundred stores, including Bloomingdale’s, one of the best-known department stores in the US.