Imagine stepping into a dark room, lit only by hundreds of small lights, sparkling like stars on a clear night. All around you—on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling— are mirrors. They make it feel like you’re looking into a kaleidoscope, your reflection repeating again and again and again in the twinkling pattern of lights.

It’s almost like staring into outer space. For a moment, it’s overwhelming. But it’s not scary—it’s a feeling of joy, of togetherness. You feel like “a single particle among billions.” A part of something bigger than yourself.

How do you discover this feeling? And how do you create it for someone else? This is the work of artist Yayoi Kusama. And this is her story.

I’m Piera Gelardi. And this is Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls. A fairy tale podcast about the real-life rebel women who inspire us.

On this episode, Yayoi Kusama—world famous painter, sculptor, designer, and pioneer of pop-art.

Yayoi Kusama was born in the mountains of rural Japan in the spring of 1929. Yayoi grew up on her parents’ seed farm, where they grew flowers. As a child, Yayoi was fascinated by nature—from the vegetables and flowers growing in the fields, to the white stones in the riverbed nearby.

When Yayoi was ten years old, something strange happened. She was sitting in her family’s field of violets, when suddenly the deep purple petals morphed into faces. Then, the flower faces started to speak to her! Both fascinated and frightened, Yayoi ran home. She didn’t understand what was happening, and had no words to describe it. So she did the only thing that made sense to her—she grabbed a pencil and paper and began to draw what she’d seen.

She didn’t know it then, but Yayoi was experiencing hallucinations. With these visions, sometimes all she could see was a colorful field of dots. Whenever this happened, Yayoi drew what she saw. And she discovered, when she made art, it made her feel better.

Yayoi dreamt of becoming an artist. But her mother wanted Yayoi to grow up to be the wife to a rich husband—not to have a career of her own. If she saw Yayoi working on a drawing, she would snatch it away, tearing it up in front of her. But this only made Yayoi draw more. She didn’t care that her mother didn’t approve of her dream—no matter what, she was determined to show the world what she could do.

When Yayoi was a teenager, Japan was a nation at war. She and other Japanese girls were sent to work in military factories to help the war effort. Yayoi was tasked with sewing parachutes for soldiers.

Air raid sirens blared and military planes roared overhead. It was a dark and stressful time for her. And she had no time to create art! Looking back, she said, “Many dreams I had rarely, if at all, saw the light of day.” This experience led her to reject war, and embrace peace.

After the war, Yayoi enrolled in an art school not far from her parents house. She and her mother had reached an agreement—if Yayoi attended etiquette classes, she could go to art school. But the school was very traditional. They only taught her a Japanese style of painting called Nihonga, which used watercolors to depict things like Japanese landscapes and samurai. Yayoi hated it. To her, art was supposed to be an expression of herself, not whatever the sensei, or teacher, told her to paint. So she taught herself painting styles that she saw in magazines—like cubism, where artists used shapes like squares, triangles, and circles, to create people, animals, and other things.
One day, at a second-hand bookstore in her hometown, she came across a book by famous American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Page after page featured O’Keeffe’s paintings of close-up flowers. They looked almost like the flower fields where Yayoi experienced her first hallucinations. Seeking advice and a mentor, Yayoi wrote to O’Keeffe, who lived thousands of miles away. She wanted to know how she could become a famous painter herself, and even sent O’Keefe a few of her watercolor paintings. She wrote, “Will you kindly show me the way?”

She waited patiently for mail from the United States. And to her surprise, she received a letter back! O’Keeffe told her that it was hard to make a living as a painter, but if that was the path she had chosen, she should move to a big city like New York to make it happen.

After Yayoi graduated art school, her parents set up many marriage proposals from sons of wealthy families. Yayoi turned down every single one. As a punishment, her mother took away her paints and canvases. Still, that didn’t stop Yayoi. She staged a solo exhibition in her hometown. But nobody seemed to care. Georgia O’Keefe had been right—if she wanted to become a famous painter, Japan was not the place to do it. Her mind was made up—she would move to the United States.

And yet, there was something she needed to do before she left. One evening, she took dozens of her paintings down to the river by her family’s home. She laid them by the water’s edge, struck a match, and set them ablaze. As they burned, she vowed to paint even better paintings once she made it to America.

In 1958, Yayoi Kusama arrived in New York City carrying a suitcase full of kimonos and drawings. Once she started painting again, Yayoi carried the heavy canvases from gallery to gallery, trying to find one willing to show her art. New York City was more progressive than Japan, but the art scene was still dominated by men; galleries wouldn’t exhibit the artwork of a woman alone. After each rejection, she’d head back to her studio crying, frustrated that nobody took her art seriously. But for the first time as an adult, she felt free. She had to keep trying.

One year later, Yayoi finally got a solo show at a gallery! She showed paintings of what she called “infinity nets” – repeated circular patterns inspired by the hallucinations she still sometimes saw. This was it—Yayoi started to break into the New York City art scene.

Yayoi experimented with new styles of art. Using the skills she’d learned in the military factory, she made “soft sculptures” of household objects like couches and chairs. She made them her own, covering them with brightly colored polka dots. For another piece, she plastered the walls and floors of a gallery with countless copies of a photo of one of her soft sculptures. She even created a room full of mirrors, positioned to reflect into one another, creating the appearance of a space that went on forever. These pieces gave life to her hallucinations and anxieties. Now others could experience what she’d experienced all her life. And it was a way to process her feelings.

“I make them and make them…until I bury myself in the process,” she said. Just like when she was a child, creating these works of art helped make sense of her visions, something she now realized was a form of mental illness. But Yayoi embraced her difference. She believed making art could be the “cure.”

Yayoi continued to promote herself and her artwork aggressively. When she didn’t receive an invitation to a major Italian art show, she created her own opportunity. She filled the space in front of the art show hall with 1,500 mirrored balls, and sold them to passersby for $2 each. The media loved her installation, and she became the unlikely star of the show.

She also experimented with performance art, which she called “Happenings.” During these performances, she would paint the bodies of volunteers with her now-signature polka dots, showing up in public places like Central Park in New York City. Often, these performances doubled as protests. Yayoi was a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War, and used her art to say so.

But in spite of these successes, Yayoi was struggling to get by in America. Not everyone liked that she used her art to express her political ideas. Her family, once they found out about these performances, became greatly ashamed of her. And while Yayoi fought to make a living, male artists, some of whom even copied her ideas, were quite successful. Crushed, and out of money, she went back home to Japan.

When Yayoi returned to Japan, there was no warm welcome for her. Japanese society was still old-fashioned. Even her fellow artists wanted nothing to do with her—they thought her work was too strange. Yayoi was devastated—not only had she been rejected by her family, but she had failed to gain acceptance from art communities at home and abroad. Art was how she expressed and soothed herself—her art was herself. When people rejected her art, it felt like they were also rejecting her.

Just a few years later, Yayoi suffered a breakdown. She decided to check herself into a mental health facility in Tokyo. There, she met a doctor. What made him special to Yayoi was that he used art as a part of his therapy and treatment of patients. He saw art how Yayoi saw art—as a medicine, and encouraged her to start creating things again. Soon, she was making collages out of what she could find at the mental health facility. She felt so comfortable and supported in her artwork there that she decided to make it her permanent home.

Yayoi was making art for herself again, even if it still wasn’t being shown in public. But one day soon, that would finally change.

By the late 1980s, Yayoi’s art had practically been forgotten. Until a young curator of Japanese modern-art named Alexandra Munroe was putting together a show in New York City. She knew that Yayoi’s art had a following among some artists, but wanted the world to know her work, too. Alexandra looked for Yayoi, and discovered that she was voluntarily living in a mental health facility, still creating art. Together, they curated an exhibit of the art Yayoi had made during her time in New York. The exhibit opened in 1989 to critical acclaim, launching Yayoi’s art career into the spotlight at long last.

And the momentum kept building. In 1993, she returned to the same event that had once rejected her—the big Italian art show. There, she put on the first show staged by a single-artist at their Japanese pavilion. Among the pieces was her trademark infinity mirror room, which now featured pumpkin sculptures, a nod to her farming roots. Five years later, a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art showed 70 of her pieces, including drawings, photographs, paintings, and more. That exhibit traveled the world.

Finally, in 2002, her hometown of Matsumoto opened its own art museum. They set aside three whole rooms to feature Yayoi’s art permanently, and covered the outside of the building with Yayoi’s signature polka dots. At one point, the city buses even got the polka dot treatment too! And in Tokyo, the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in 2017, showing different exhibitions of her work.

By any measure, Yayoi Kusama has achieved the fame and recognition she always sought for her art, and for herself. Now in her late nineties, Yayoi lives in the mental health institute in Tokyo, where she first sought treatment in 1977. Every day, she heads out in her signature red bob wig and colorful, edgy clothes and walks to her art studio two blocks away to continue her work.

Now, millions of people around the world have visited her mirrored infinity rooms, waiting hours in line to glimpse themselves—and infinity—inside.

Despite years of rejection by her family, her hometown, her country, and the art world, Yayoi Kusama stayed true to herself. She never tried to hide the illness that inspired her to create. Instead, she used her art to express herself and her feelings, inspiring artists and museum goers all around the world.

You too can use art—painting, drawing, collage, sculpture—you name it!–-to express your feelings. To find yourself, to inspire others, and to create your vision for a better world.

CREDITS:
This podcast is a production of Rebel Girls. It’s based on the book series Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.

This episode was narrated by Piera Gelardi. It was produced and written by Sam Gebauer, with sound design and mixing by Carter Wogahn. With sound design and mixing my Morgane Fouse.

Haley Dapkus edited and directed this episode. Fact checking by Danielle Roth. Arianna Griffiths was our intern. Our executive producers were Haley Dapkus, Anjelika Temple, and Jes Wolfe.

Original theme music was composed and performed by Elettra Bargiacchi.

A special thanks to the whole Rebel Girls team, who make this podcast possible! Until next time, staaaay rebel!