Yayoi Kusama exhibition to bring art star’s infinity rooms and polka dots to NGV

Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist who has become an Instagram favourite in her 90s with her fantastical pumpkin sculptures, polka dots and kaleidoscopic infinity rooms, is the subject of a blockbuster retrospective heading to Australia.

The retrospective will spill out of the gallery’s interiors and on to the Federation Court, and will include an as yet unseen Kusama installation under the cascades of the building’s familiar water wall.

It is these immersive kaleidoscopic works, representing Kusama’s lifelong exploration of self-obliteration and the infinity of space, that have earned her the title of world’s most Instagrammable artist.

The exhibition will also give Australia its first glimpse of a newly acquired Dancing Pumpkin, one of three Kusama has recently created, the first being displayed in the New York Botanical Garden in 2021.

Photograph: Mark Lennihan/APKusama has been painting and sculpting pumpkins since she was a child, growing up on a plant nursery and seed farm in Hirohito’s militarised Japan.

Her Narcissus Garden, consisting of hundreds of mirrored spheres, was sold off by the artist one ball at a time for US$2 each until biennale authorities put a stop to it.