The Thousands

Yayoi Kusama’s earliest artistic expression was as a young girl, placing pebbles strategically on the riverbed running through her town. She admits that, broadly speaking, this is what she still does.**’Repeated stereotype’ is the mean-sounding translation for this almost meditative process, outlaying forms in their pure essence, again and again, in a manner that she describes as ‘an exercise in love’. It’s an obsession with this process of loving the world that has always been her inspiration, not other artists, and from small girl to old woman, in her own words ‘Kusama is always Kusama’.