Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama became famous for her vibrant polka dots and psychedelic art installations, some of which are in Honolulu. She died last month at the age of 97.
Her work was exhibited at the Honolulu Museum of Art and at the Honolulu Biennial in 2016 and 2017. Also, her large-scale, bronze sculpture of a polka-dotted pumpkin is prominently displayed at Ala Moana Center in the ʻEwa Wing side of the mall.
But Kusama’s death has drawn renewed attention to racist and anti-Black descriptions in her past writing.
In her autobiography, Kusama made exoticizing and stereotypical descriptions about Black people, describing them as “exotic and primitive beings.” According to culture writer Dexter Thomas, who was banned from her studio during an interview for VICE in 2017, some of Kusama's racist remarks in her book were removed from the English translation.
Kusama later apologized for her comments in 2023 — more than two decades after her book was published.
Behind the artwork
In light of Kusama’s passing, HoMA is opening an exhibit called “Vital Connections: Art & the Brain” on Sept. 12. It’s the museum’s first work by Kusama to be added to its permanent collection, and it includes a composition of the Japanese artist's trademark black dots on an orange background. It’s part of a gift from the art collector Fredrica Cassiday.
Tyler Cann, the senior curator of modern and contemporary at HoMA, said there’s an interconnectedness within Kusama’s work that resonates with art viewers in Hawai‘i, especially when there’s a significance behind her polka dots.
“For Kusama, multiplying those dots, as becoming polka dots that cover every single surface, including your own body, is a way of transcending oneself, or she called it self-obliteration,” he said to HPR.
Kusama’s work spans more than seven decades, making her one of the most well-recognized contemporary artists. She grew up in Tokyo during World War II, and she overcame a male-dominated artistic landscape during her time in New York in the 1960s.
Kusama checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Japan in 1977.
For Katherine Ann Leilani Tuider, she learned about Kusama’s work when she studied art history in Paris. She began to recognize her work intimately during the Honolulu Biennial, in which Tuider was the co-founder and first executive director of the Honolulu Biennial Foundation, which is now known as Hawai‘i Contemporary.
Tuider said she was drawn to Kusama’s art because of her connection to nature. In 2016, Kusama’s “Footprints of Life” was shown in Hawaiʻi.
“That playful, colorful play, and that connectedness to nature really spoke to me of that art can be lighthearted and fun, while also having deep messages about art’s connectedness to nature and how we are part of nature,” she said.
Kusama’s sculptures were displayed in the courtyard of Ward Village at the IBM Building, which drew nearly 6,000 people, according to Tuider.
“It was also the first time that Kusama’s work, to my knowledge, had ever been exhibited publicly in Hawai‘i,” Tuider said. “It was a very important moment in terms of access to incredible international contemporary art for our local community as well as visitors.”.
The artist and her anti-Black remarks
The tension goes beyond Kusama herself. Ethan Caldwell, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Hawai‘i, said there’s an added layer to the Black experience in Japan, where Kusama is from.
“There is one sense of a person, one being foreign because they're not Japanese, but then the second layer is of the sort of global anti-Blackness that has to also be recognized,” he said. “And that is something that you don't have to be in the United States to practice anti-Blackness or be racist.”
He questioned how Kusama views Black bodies within her work.
In Hyperallergic, Thomas, the aforementioned culture writer, cited an essay of “1945 and Now,” where there’s a photo of Kusama in 1964 being physically carried through Washington Square Park in the arms of a Black man.
“He is unnamed, and the original quote form that magazine, Kusama refers to him not as a collaborator, or even as a human being, but instead speaks of ‘The head of this Negro,’” Thomas wrote.
Caldwell, the ethnic studies professor, said he finds Kusama’s work troubling.
“In some ways, it almost reminds me of when folks will play up particular stereotypes in literature or television and other cultural production, that they then are able to gain notoriety and cloud from the denigration of the promotion of these essentialisms about Black folks or whatever other targeted group,” he said.
“This is not to say that during those times it was permissible then, nor should it be permissible now,” he continued.
Black people make up 2% of Hawaiʻi’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
There’s been questions of how to separate the artist from their work while also holding them accountable for what they’ve said and done.
“You can’t remove the art form the artist and call it a day, but instead, we have to understand that folks are complicated,” Caldwell said. “That also then means acknowledging if folks are anti-Black or racist.”
Cann said there have been conversations in art institutions about providing context to an artist’s work and their past.
“Sometimes even showing a work allows us to provide the sort of context for thinking about not only the artwork, but also, perhaps, some troubling elements of the artist's past,” Cann said.
