#storybehindtheart

On March 22 2009, Yayoi Kusama celebrates her 80th birthday. Her artworks Flowers that bloom at midnight was exhibited at Gagosian Gallery in May in Beverly Hills. In an interview, she declared “When (flowers) die, they become dust.” With these artworks, flowers become eternal.

At 87 she said that the highlight of her career “is still coming. I’m going to create it in the future” and that “It feels good to be an outsider.”

The circle emojis refer to her obsession with dots in her hallucinations.

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Art curator Alexandra Munroe a strong supporter of the artist, organized in 1989 Yayoi Kusama's first retrospective in the US. She wrote ”She is the undiscovered genius whose late fame is justly deserved”.

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Sources: Yayoi Kusama (Revised and Expanded Edition), Phaidon, 2017

Yayoi Kusama at 90: How the 'undiscovered genius' became an international sensation, Alexandra Munroe, CNN, March 22, 2019

"It Feels Good to Be an Outsider": Yayoi Kusama on Avoiding Labels, Organizing Orgies, and Battling Hardships, Artspace, May 8 2017

How Yayoi Kusama, the ‘Infinity Mirrors’ visionary, channels mental illness into art, Washington Post, February 15, 2017