Kusama, Her Brand, and The Experience Economy

Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms

Kusama, Her Brand, and The Experience Economy

In an age where physical art was prioritized, Kusama’s early interactive art allowed a break from the traditional gallery space. [1] However, sixty years later, her works have experienced re-contextualization due to the internet, social media, and a shift towards the experience economy. Kusama’s skill in branding herself and marketing her art, combined with the new strategy of museum social media promotion, allowed for her resurgence in popularity in the 2000s. Museums are changing their policies to not only allow noncommercial photography but to explicitly allow and encourage it. [2] The aspect of creating and sharing content around art continues to be a large part of the draw of Kusama’s artwork. It is a relatively new phenomenon, that people can photograph themselves interacting with art exhibitions and then post them for their online audiences. Kusama is likely aware of the phenomenon that her “instagrammable” works have created and is mostly likely playing into or encouraging it.

Kusama’s dot patterns are now instantly recognizable. They have become synonymous with her art and with her brand, now able to stand in as a replacement for Kusama’s name and face. Doryun Chung argues that the public fascination with the polka-dot pattern and with Kusama has become a fascination with what she has crafted her brand to represent rather than just with her art. Chug then goes on to explain that Kusama’s branding is based not only on her patterns but also on her openness about her personal life and mental health struggles.[3]

Frances Morris, curator at the Tate Modern, argues that Kusama’s recognizable dot patterns have allowed her to become a globally branded artist.[4] Her mirror rooms and their Instagram-ability (appeal to an online media-sharing culture) have led to her revival as a well-known contemporary artist living today.[5] Exhibitions of her works draw hundreds of thousands of viewers and have perpetual online waitlists to experience her mirror rooms, with The Obliteration Room itself touring to eighteen countries and displayed at thirty-one venues with a total attendance of over 6,242,000 people.[6] Pointed marketing and branding is not new to Kusama, who has been practicing and perfecting these strategies since her move to America in the 1950s. Here, I am defining branding and marketing as strategies in which artists separate themselves from other artists and attempt to define their careers. I am not referring to the capitalist definition of branding and marketing as economic strategies.

Kusama was well versed in branding and marketing herself, even from the beginning of her career in America. She acted as an artist, publicist, and manager, learning to, according to Lee, exploit the “commercial value of her Japanese body and identity at a time when escalating Cold War national pride and xenophobia jeopardized her career in New York.”[7] She was in charge of maintaining and managing her persona and image, regularly arranging for professional photographs to be taken of her with her work and of her at work in her studio, creating a conflation of Kusama’s art and photographic likeness, cultivating a persona that matched her artwork through the use of clothing that mirrored her art and the use of the “mentally ill artist” stereotype.[8] Her outward confessions to the world about herself reflect a conscious creation of a persona and of a specific lens through which to view her artwork. Pictures of Kusama became embedded in the discussion of her work; her body, at times, becoming inseparable from her art and discussions around it. Kusama was known to utilize her “otherness,” racially and sexually at odds with the normative conception of the American white male artist, exacerbating her image and body through self-staged nude photoshoots as well as in public performances that took place between 1967 and 1970.[9] She staged performance art pieces wearing a kimono in order to critique Orientalist fetishism while also wearing the kimono to her gallery openings to draw attention to her work.[10]

Kusama has also frequently confronted the idea of commodity and consumerism within gallery spaces in her practice, such as in her Happenings and her Narcissus Garden. An eBay listing for a sticker sheet from the Zwirner Gallery’s iteration of The Obliteration Room advertised it as art from Yayoi Kusama for $500 (Fig. 33). Visitors receive one sticker sheet on entry. To keep your sticker sheet and sell it implies that you have not actually participated in the art. It also raises the question, what counts as an art object from The Obliteration Room? The art, here, is the process of audience contributions, and it is the sum of all previous audience contributions. A ready-made, printed sticker sheet, of which there were 117,175 used (not counting the overall number manufactured) from December 6, 2014 – April 19, 2015, is not, by itself, Kusama’s art.[11] The sticker sheets, divorced from their context, serve no good as Kusama’s artworks, as they are only a small portion of the entire work.

Kusama has previously mocked the idea of art as commodity at the 1966 Venice Biennale. At the 33rd Venice Biennale, Kusama displayed her Narcissus Garden outside the prestigious international art exhibition’s Italian Pavilion. The work was recreated by Kusama in 2002 alongside Obliteration Room for the APT at the QAGOMA.[12] Her original Narcissus Garden consisted of 1,500 factory-made mirror balls alongside a sign that read “Your Narcissism for Sale” wherein passers-by were invited to purchase the mirror balls for 1,500 lira (about $2 each).[13] Kusama stood amongst the mirror balls, marketing herself as part of the art piece (Fig. 14). Kusama was asked to stop selling her art at the Biennale because officials argued that she was treating her art as a commodity rather than as an intellectual or philosophical gesture but was also playing with her audience’s sense of art and the self.[14] By selling her art, Kusama was transgressing the conventional code of conduct at the Biennale and treating her art as a commodity but was also playing with her audience’s sense of art and the self.[15] Notably, her sign asked audiences to buy their narcissism, not her art, reflecting the artist’s intention to parody the collection of art and refute discussions of her as narcissist.[16] In that case, Kusama’s ready-made artwork was both performance and commodity. One could argue that her Obliteration Room stickers and their resulting eBay sale could also be an act of commodity. However, Kusama is not selling her own stickers and seems to request that the museum staff not leave the gallery. Since the original intent was not to sell the stickers, the sale of the stickers does not achieve the same result as the 1966 Narcissus Garden.

Kusama’s art experienced a resurgence in the 1990s-2000s, coinciding with the rise of the “experience economy” and changing capitalist system. Author Joseph Pine defines the “experience economy” as an economic shift wherein the customer values experiences that engage them in a personal way over goods and services.[17] Scholar Nicolas Bourriaud offers a similar explanation for his theory of relational art. He sees participatory art as not only a reflection of the 1980s—1990s shift from a goods-based economy to a service-based one but also as a reflection of a response to the virtual relationships of globalization, which prompted a desire for face-to-face interactions between people.[18] Kusama’s Obliteration Room and other participatory artworks fit perfectly into this regenerated interest in experiences over commodities, as she creates art with the focus of visually showing community rather than creating art as an object. Kusama’s physical spaces exist as a place wherein audiences can gather without purchasing something (except for the price of entry, depending on its hosting museum). Her art satisfies a need for a physical community at a time when the community is becoming abstract, having moved into online spaces.[19]

In other words, museum visitors today already have previous knowledge of the Kusama branded experience due to her renewed popularity and appearance all over the digital landscape. Visitors are likely going to see Kusama exhibitions due to this popularity rather than because of any desire to incite social or political change.[20] Visitors want to experience artwork because it has Kusama’s name attached and because they are already aware of the experiences that her artwork can provide. In the social media age, audiences are no longer naïve to Kusama’s works. They have previous exposure either due to her actual art installations or through her brand collaborations, such as the viral campaign with Louis Vuitton.[21] Audiences who participate can now take photographic proof that they have participated and share those photos with their social circles, allowing them both an enjoyable art experience and increased social clout.[22]

While the changing media landscape has led to a resurgence of her popularity, it has also changed the meaning of her work. Museum visitors who come to Kusama exhibitions are looking to have “experiences” and to use these “experiences” as content. Museums are leaning into the content economy, understanding that pictures on social media generate free advertising for their museums. For example, the Hirshhorn experienced a record number of visitors who posted pictures of the exhibit 34,000 times across social media websites.[23] Audience-posted pictures of the exhibits, then served as free advertisement for the museum. Participants then act as both actors in the artwork and agents of the economic interests of the museum. Museums now see visitors as both consumers and as consumer goods. When participants post pictures of themselves interacting with the installation, they are simultaneously encouraging their followers to experience a Kusama work while also telling them what to expect experientially and visually when inside the gallery.

[1] Naomi Rea, “As Museums Fall in Love with ‘experiences,’ Their Core Missions Face Redefinition,” (Artnet News, March 15, 2019).

[2] Jennifer Sokolowsky, “Art in the Instagram Age: How Social Media Is Shaping Art and How You Experience It,” The Seattle Times, November 16, 2017, https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-in-the-instagram-age-how-social-media-is-shaping-art-and-how-you-experience-it/.

[3] Chung, “Narcissus Garden: How Yayoi Kusama Has Become a Global Cultural,” 270-275.

[4] Gray, “Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room | TateShots,” (3:22).

[5] While the differences between her Infinity Rooms and Obliteration Rooms would be interesting to discuss, I feel that their only relevance here is to discuss the major different between them, which is the inclusion/exclusion of a mirror and how that has led to Kusama’s return to popularity. Her resurgence has then changed the way in which her art is interpreted by contemporary audiences, which is something I feel is pertinent to my thesis.

[6] Tunny, email message, August 22, 2023.

[7] Lee, “The Art and Politics of Artists’ Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama,” 25.

[8] Yayoi Kusama, Frances Morris, and Jo Applin, Yayoi Kusama, 287; Lee, “The Art and Politics of Artists’ Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama,” 29.

[9] Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject, 6-7.

[10] Lee, “The Art and Politics of Artists’ Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama,” 34.

[11] Tunny, email message, August 22, 2023.

[12] Kusama, Infinity Net, 54; Kusama considers the sale of the balls as an “audience-participation” performance. For this paper, the sale of the balls will not be considered audience-participation. To consider the act of selling to be an audience performance, then we would have to consider all of capitalism an art performance. Expanding on that, all ticketing sales to museums would then be considered another piece in the museum. However, I will consider Kusama’s relationship to art and commerce in a later section.

[13] Lee, “The Art and Politics of Artists’ Personas,” 35; Kusama, Infinity Net, 54.

[14] Yamamura, Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular, 126.

[15] Yamamura, Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular, 126.

[16] Lee, “The Art and Politics of Artists’ Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama.” 35.

[17] Joseph B. Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy, 12.

[18] Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 116; “…The emergence of new technologies, like the Internet and multimedia systems, points to a collective desire to create new areas of conviviality (the quality of being friendly and lively; friendliness) and introduce new types of transaction with regard to the cultural object.” —Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 26.

[19] O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube, 52.

[20] Bishop, Artificial Hells, 2

[21] “Products by Louis Vuitton: Yayoi Kusama X Louis Vuitton: Creating Infinity.” Louis Vuitton. Accessed October 23, 2024. https://eu.louisvuitton.com/eng-e1/products/yayoi-kusama-x-louis-vuitton-creating-infinity-nvprod4800001v/R09253; Silbert, Jake. “Louis Vuitton X Yayoi Kusama Is Peak Luxury Collab. Is That a Good Thing?” Highsnobiety, January 19, 2023. https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/louis-vuitton-yayoi-kusama-review/.

[22] For example, #infinitekusama, #obliterationroom, and the tagged location of “The Obliteration Room” each have hundreds of posts from visitors to the museum, not just from museums promoting the show. https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/503810746/yayoi-kusama-the-obliteration-room/

[23] Julia Halperin and Sarah Cascone, “Anatomy of a Blockbuster: How the Hirshhorn Museum Hit the Jackpot with Its Yayoi Kusama Show;” Philip Kennicott, “I went to Kusama and all I got was this lousy selfie,” (The Washington Post, 2017).

[24] “Products by Louis Vuitton: Yayoi Kusama X Louis Vuitton: Creating Infinity.” Louis Vuitton. Accessed October 23, 2024. https://eu.louisvuitton.com/eng-e1/products/yayoi-kusama-x-louis-vuitton-creating-infinity-nvprod4800001v/R09253.