[{"id":521,"date":"2024-11-28T04:15:40","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T04:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=521"},"modified":"2024-12-04T00:45:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T00:45:53","slug":"community-building","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/part-2-later-iterations-of-the-obliteration-rooms\/community-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Building"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Room<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Community Building<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u201cCommunity\u201d in The Obliteration Room<\/em> can refer to the combined sticker remnants left by the participants over the course of the entire exhibition of the installation and to the physical bodies of the participants in the space. Claire Bishop, in Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship<\/em>, describes this trend towards art and community building as a way for artists to turn previously considered \u201cviewers\u201d into \u201cco-producers\u201d or \u201cparticipants.\u201d[1] <\/span>Bishop argues that although these are ideals and not actualized realities, they are created with the aim of placing pressure on conventional modes of artistic production and consumption under capitalism. She adds that community-building art is an attempt to return to a communal society accompanied by a utopian rethinking of the potential of art.[2]<\/span><\/p>

By bringing strangers together to achieve a common goal within a domestic interior, that is, to \u201cobliterate\u201d the white space with colorful dots, Kusamaakes them share a once private space and heightening the sense of community. Kusama has most likely chosen to transform the gallery setting into a home interior (and exterior in the case of the Zwirner Gallery installation) rather than leaving the gallery intact or creating a more formal space like a classroom or office, to make public the previously private space. Though it is possible that the domestic interior was originally meant to create a familiar and, therefore, safe, space for children, it has picked up additional meanings over time such as creating a space in which adults can regress to a childhood state of mind. It should be noted that Kusama\u2019s created community is only dismantled when the installation is torn down at the end of its exhibition and the stickers are removed. It is not dismantled when the physical bodies of the participants leave the space. Furthermore, the community in The Obliteration Room <\/em>may exist as a group of participants, but they are ultimately led and instructed by Kusama, who has the final authoritarian say over the results. They are allowed to make their own choices, though any choice that violates Kusama\u2019s strict set of predetermined rules would be removed from the installation.<\/p>

Creating community through artwork inspired Kusama to stage naked Happenings and \u201cbody festivals\u201d from 1967 through 1969. Her Happenings and her Obliteration Room function in much the same ways in terms of both visual aesthetics and institutional critique. Kusama was explicitly against the Vietnam War and vocal about her opposition, especially because of her experience growing up in Japan during wartime.[3]<\/span> Kusama used her art as an anti-war protest, staging naked anti-war Happenings in New York outside of the traditional gallery setting that included herself, other spontaneous volunteers, as well as other figures from the art world which she called the Naked Body Festivals<\/em>. Walking Piece<\/em> (1966) and 14th Street Happening<\/em> (1966) marked the first significant moments when the artist\u2019s image became an explicit part of her work and signaled her shift from sculpture and installation to performance and happenings. Her Happenings, unlike her earlier performances, relied on the participation of groups of young people and curious onlookers, who were originally charged for entry.[4]\u00a0<\/span>These early art pieces also existed as a form of institutional critique since they existed as art outside the space of the museum. They could not be commodified and were instead meant to create community. Her later Obliteration Room <\/em>iterations followed a similar trajectory as Kusama asked participants to \u201cobliterate\u201d or obscure the white gallery walls and white-painted furniture with colorful dot stickers. Kusama\u2019s created community within the Happenings was fundamentally different than the community created within The<\/em> Obliteration Room<\/em>, however. The Happening works are entirely reliant on the participants, they would not exist without their physical bodies in the work. The participants of The<\/em> Obliteration Room<\/em> can leave anytime, and the piece will continue. Participants in the Happenings cannot. On the other hand, in The<\/em> Obliteration Room <\/em>the community created can be visualized by the sticker remnants. Once the physical bodies of the participants leave the room, their stickers still exist within the space as proof of a formed community.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 1. Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2002.
Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork, Gallery 3, QAGOMA.
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia.
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In the Happenings, participants follow Kusama\u2019s instructions to remove their clothes paint one another with colorful dots while jazz music played. They enacted Kusama\u2019s ideas of obliteration, self-destruction, and the collective.[5] <\/span>Kusama\u2019s foray into Happenings and communal art also originated from the fact that she was feeling alienated and isolated within the white, male-dominated art world. Her later installations would have the same goal of creating a community between interacting members. Like these Happenings, her Obliteration Rooms<\/em> later exist as shared environments that speak to a shared public communal sphere rather than an individual private world, a sentiment that would remain true throughout her entire career.[6]<\/span><\/p>

Much like her earlier Happenings<\/em>, The Obliteration Room<\/em> is a participatory installation, meaning that audiences are asked to walk into the space and contribute to the artwork.[7]<\/span> Kusama\u2019s original Obliteration Room<\/em> was originally meant to help children explore art through forms that cater to them such as tactility and physically smaller furniture that was designed for them. The installation, however, has now changed meaning through a change in both demography and size. What once was a work designed to let children experience art and museums now represents a relational art piece that allows adults to interact with the work.<\/p>

The Obliteration Room<\/em> is not created by a single participant. Rather, it is an amalgamation of those who have attended the exhibition and placed their stickers onto the space. Participation in The Obliteration Room <\/em>can be quantified both by data provided by its hosting museum and by time-lapse video taken throughout its exhibition.[8]<\/span> In its two most recent displays of The Obliteration Room<\/em>, the QAGOMA received 304,265 visitors who used 117,175 sticker sheets between December 6, 2014\u2013April 19, 2015, and received 435,151 visitors who used 148,500 sticker sheets between October 14, 2017\u2013February 4, 2018.[9]\u00a0<\/span>This data shows the popularity of the installation, as well as allowing a quantifiable number of potential contributing participants within the space over the exhibition period. This proves that Kusama\u2019s exhibits are reaching beyond the art world and breaching into popular entertainment. Because of this, participants likely have outside knowledge of what to expect when experiencing a Kusama exhibition. It also means that a larger community is created within the exhibition due to the increased number of stickers. Although applied individually, once placed, stickers are not individually viewed. This volume of stickers represents an archive of participation, in which audiences are not just making individual contributions but are part of a larger collective that is asked to participate in the work. Lastly, the greater number of participants also changes the look of the installation. More stickers mean that more of the physical area of the room is covered with colored dots rather than the white of the walls of the furniture.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 37. Inside of The Obliteration Room.
Yayoi Kusama, David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015.
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Figure 38. Inside of The Obliteration Room. Yayoi Kusama, David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015. Image credit to Lyman Creative Co. https:\/\/lymancreativegroup.com\/blog\/yayoi-kusama-at-the-david-zwirner-gallery.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Obliteration Room<\/em> acts both as a space and a time to be walked through. Commenting on the installation and creating community occur at the same time as seeing and perceiving surroundings.[10]<\/span> The room can then be considered time-based art, in which audiences and artwork are constituted in a particular location at a particular time.[11]<\/span><\/span> The artwork is then marked by a condition of non-availability, viewable only at a specific time, and once it ends, all that remains is documentation, which cannot be confused with experiencing the art.[12]\u00a0<\/span>The artwork lasts from the day it is open to the public until the day it is closed. After the exhibition, all the stickers are removed, and the furniture and objects are disposed of or recycled if possible.[13]\u00a0<\/span>Removing the stickers is the only way to deconstruct the created community. The work and community are not reliant on the presence of the physical body within the space. It is instead reliant on length of the exhibition and the actions of the museum.<\/p>

Additionally, Kusama\u2019s participatory installation appeals to the audience\u2019s sense of responsibility. Audiences\u2019 contributions add to those of others, creating equal acts of participation within the work. The visitor must understand that his\/her gestures contribute to the construction of the work.[14]<\/span> Thus, the work can be considered \u201copen,\u201d reliant on the definition by scholars Hyun Jean Lee, and Jeong Han Kim in \u201cAfter Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The New Active Audience in the Social Media Era.\u201d \u00a0\u201cOpen,\u201d by their definition, refers to the idea that the museum visitors feel that they can interpret the piece in any way and add to the piece in any way that they desire. As long as the artist\u2019s instructions are not communicated to the audience by the hosting museum, the work appears totally \u201copen\u201d but, in reality, is not.[15]\u00a0<\/span>While the size, shape, and colors of the stickers have already been predetermined by Kusama, there is an infinite realm of possibilities in which areas and audiences can place their stickers. The importance of this is that, even though the work is considered \u201copen,\u201d the artist has determined in advance the type of participation within it that the audience may have.[16]<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u201cOpen\u201d artworks relate to a sense of authority between the viewer and the museum guards. Aside from enforcing the artist\u2019s rules, museum guards also monitor the physical activity of the participants. Museum visitors may also assume that every action they make is monitored by the guards either physically in the room with or after them and those watching on the security cameras.[17]<\/span> The proximity to \u201copenness\u201d that the work achieves is then based on the individual’s personal code of ethics. Engaging with art in museums often implicitly means not touching or physically interacting with the artwork. By taking this idea and flipping it, Kusama has created an uncomfortable or exciting scenario for audiences accustomed to a particular experience within the museum space. Children who are not acquainted with museum rules may feel more comfortable interacting with artworks than adults who are aware and respectful of traditional museum rules. In addition, within the \u201copen\u201d art piece, there still exists the dominance of artist\u2019s specifications, then the enforcement by the museum staff and guards, and finally, audiences who participate in the creation of the work. The participants are only in control of what they do with their own stickers and cannot control what happens to the room after they leave. Unless an audience member returns to revisit the work, they will never know that their inclusions have been discretely removed by museum staff, in keeping with the periodic maintenance of the work.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 39. Soul Under the Moon, 2002.
Yayoi Kusama APT 2002: Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art Mirror\/Infinity Room.
QAGOMA. Copyright: Queensland Art Gallery, QAGOMA. Imaging Photographer: Natasha Harth.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Claire Bishop argued that Kusama used \u201cmimetic engulfment\u201d by applying polka dots to obliterate herself and her audience, allowing for the blending of the self and the surrounding environment.[18]<\/span> Bishop defines this phrase as mimicry of one\u2019s environment, like in camouflage. Beginning with her staged photographs of herself sitting amongst her phallic sculptures, Kusama was familiar with the concept of art and the artist acting as one unit. Kusama typically is photographed in front of her art pieces in polka-dotted outfits, allowing her to blend in with her art in a full realization of her self-obliteration concept (Fig. 11). When Kusama began her career in New York in the 1960s, the idea of camouflage would have been interpreted as a direct anti-war sentiment. Unless they are wearing polka dots or apply the stickers to their own bodies, audiences of The<\/em> Obliteration Room<\/em> will not experience the same immersion into the art. This immersion, however, can happen to the audience if they apply the stickers to their bodies, as children may choose to do. The application of stickers to one\u2019s body is not explicitly outlawed or included in the instructions. It can be assumed that many adults forgo this \u201cmimetic engulfment\u201d experience, as Bishop refers to it, of applying dots on themselves as it is associated with more childish behavior or because they prefer a more \u201cpermanent\u201d application of the dots to the physical installation. In the installation, adults may find their sense of imagination is heightened and that they will engage with more \u201cchildish\u201d desires and actions.<\/p>

Works that are theoretically \u201copen\u201d or, at least, appear to be fully open to public intervention inspire a pluralistic, collective worldview amongst its participants who are confronted with the realization that their contributions are a smaller part of a larger collective. The Obliteration Room <\/em>has a multiplicity of possibilities that are only limited by Kusama and the hosting museum\u2019s guidelines. It also implies that no audience member is more important than any other.\u00a0 The space is democratic in the way that all audiences, no matter their age, are asked to equally participate by adding the same predetermined number of stickers. Audiences are asked to work together in a community to create a single piece of art. The community is also brought together by a single common goal: creating the art piece. The work, however, is not fully democratic. Kusama acts as leader, predetermining the actions that can be taken and how the actions will look in the space.<\/p>

Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em>, first created in collaboration with the QAGOMA specifically as art meant for children, a traditionally overlooked group of museum attendees, allows children to experience high art in interactive ways that allow them to touch and feel the artwork in order to learn about it. In upcoming iterations, Kusama and collaborating museums would change the artwork so that it was focused more on adults than children, but the first iteration was purely designed with children in mind, with furniture and activities that would be familiar and comfortable to them. Her work then is a visual testament to the community created, showing a collapsed timeline of all the participants through the stickers they placed on the piece.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 4. Artist's Drawing. Yayoi Kusama, Kid\u2019s APT Interactive Artwork, 2002. QAGOMA. Copyright: Queensland Art Gallery.
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Figure 13. Yayoi Kusama with one of her \u201cAccumulation\u201d pieces, 1966 Image credit to Formidable Mag. https:\/\/www.formidablemag.com\/yayoi-kusama\/<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChanged and Unchanged<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKusama, Her Brand,
and The Experience Economy<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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[1]<\/span>\u00a0Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship,<\/em>\u00a0London: Verso, 2012, 2.<\/p>

[2]<\/span>\u00a0Bishop, Artificial Hells<\/em>, 2.<\/p>

[3]\u00a0<\/span>Lenz, Kusama – Infinity<\/em>.<\/p>

[4]\u00a0<\/span>Yayoi Kusama, Frances Morris, and Jo Applin, Yayoi Kusama \/ Edited by Frances Morris; with Contributions by Jo Applin … [et Al.]<\/em> (London: Tate Publishing, 2012): 287.<\/p>

[5]\u00a0<\/span>Kusama and Rosenthal, Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective \/ Edited by Stephanie Rosenthal,<\/em> 23.<\/p>

[6]\u00a0<\/span>Jo Applin, \u201cI\u2019m Here, but Nothing: Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Environments,\u201d In Yayoi Kusama \/ Edited by Frances Morris; with Contributions by Jo Applin … [et Al.]<\/em> (London: Tate Publishing, 2012): 287.<\/p>

[7]<\/span>\u00a0Jo Applin, \u201cI\u2019m Here, but Nothing: Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Environments.\u201d Yayoi Kusama \/ Edited by Frances Morris; with Contributions by Jo Applin, Juliet Mitchell, Frances Morris, Mignon Nixon, Rachel Taylor, Midori Yamamura,<\/em> (New York: D.A.P.\/Distributed Art Publishers, 2012): 287.<\/p>

\u201cHer 1968 rallying cry \u201cLet\u2019s get to know one another\u2019, is striking, less as an instance of publicity-seeking at a time when she was embracing the free love and happening movements, than as a serious and potentially radical mode of \u2018world-building,\u2019 which her environments continue both to imagine and produce.\u201d – Jo Applin, \u201cI\u2019m Here, but Nothing,\u201d 287.<\/p>

[8]<\/span>\u00a0QAGOMA, \u201cWatch as Yayoi Kusama’s ‘The obliteration room’ is transformed,\u201d posted March 10, 2015, Yayoi Kusama: The obliteration room \/ Children\u2019s Art Centre, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) Brisbane Australia \/ 06 December 2014 \u2013 19 April 2015, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, 1:52. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=G4gQ7Ryt2R8&t=2s<\/a>;<\/p>

Quantitative data can be used to address the increased popularity in Kusama exhibits over the years. For example, the 2017 version at the Hirshhorn museum, used 750,000 dot stickers during the 12-week exhibition according to Molly Hermann in the documentary, Seriously Amazing Objects<\/em>, Season 2, episode 3, \u201cSupersize.\u201d (45:00). Later versions of the project at the QAGOMA, 304,265 visitors used 117,175 sticker sheets between December 6, 2014 \u2013 April 19, 2015, and 435,151 visitors who used 148,500 sticker sheets between October 14, 2017 \u2013 February 4, 2018, as relayed to me in an email by Jaqueline Tunny.<\/p>

[9]\u00a0<\/span>Tunny, email message, August 22, 2023.<\/p>

[10]\u00a0<\/span>Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics,<\/em> 15-16.<\/p>

[11]<\/span>\u00a0Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 19.<\/p>

[12]<\/span>\u00a0Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics<\/em>, 29.<\/p>

\u201cThe artwork is thus no longer presented to be consumed within a \u2018monumental\u2019 time frame and open for a universal public; rather, it elapses within a factual time, for an audience summoned<\/em> by<\/em> the artist. In a nutshell, the work prompts meetings and invites appointments, managing its own temporal structure.\u201d \u2014Bourriaud, 29.<\/p>

[13]\u00a0<\/span>Tunny, email message, August 22, 2023.<\/p>

[14]<\/span>\u00a0Steve Dietz, \u2018Foreword\u2019, in Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media, <\/em>MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2010, p xiv.<\/em><\/p>

[15]<\/span>\u00a0Hyun Jean Lee, and Jeong Han Kim. \u201cAfter Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The New Active Audience in the Social Media Era.\u201d Third text<\/em> 30, no. 5-6 (2016): 479-480.<\/p>

In reference to Felix Gonzalez-Torres\u2019 candy spills – \u201cThe certificate describes the operative rules for the artist\u2019s work, and according to it, the work should always be refilled with a certain number of sweets at the end of each day. For curators, keeping the work alive is a great responsibility. However, such responsibility rests with the museum, not the audience. Moreover, the certificate may not have restricted the audience\u2019s extended participation. Also, as long as the certificate is kept hidden from the audience, there is no such specific instruction for the audience, and this is the reason why the work appeared totally open.\u201d \u2013 Lee and Kim, \u201cAfter Felix Gonzalez-Torres,\u201d 479-480<\/p>

[16]<\/span>\u00a0Bishop, Installation Art: a Critical History,<\/em> 127.<\/p>

[17]\u00a0<\/span>Lee and Kim. \u201cAfter Felix Gonzalez-Torres,\u201d 482.<\/p>

[18]\u00a0<\/span>Bishop, Installation Art, <\/em>90.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Room Community Building \u201cCommunity\u201d in The Obliteration Room can refer to the combined sticker remnants left by the participants over the course of the entire exhibition of the installation and to the physical bodies of the participants in the space. Claire Bishop, in Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":87,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-521","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/521\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":518,"date":"2024-11-28T04:12:14","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T04:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=518"},"modified":"2024-12-04T00:57:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T00:57:14","slug":"childrens-art","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/part-1-the-original-obliteration-room\/childrens-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Children’s Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Part 1: The Original Obliteration Room and Children \u201cPlay\u201d<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Children's Art\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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As mentioned previously, The Obliteration Room <\/em>was initially commissioned for the Children\u2019s Art Centre at QAGOMA, which comprises two floors of exhibition-related muti-media artistic activities designed for children aged up to twelve, although space is also open to teenagers and adults.[1]<\/span> Artists who display works in the Children\u2019s Art Center are invited by the museum to create child-friendly projects that emphasize interactivity and sensory participation to accompany exhibitions that are not specifically for children in the main section of the museum.[2]<\/span> Despite catering to children through shape and size, The Obliteration Room <\/em>was originally always open to adults. It could be argued that the adults participating in the work regress to a childlike state while interacting with the work, reverting the adult mind to a state of child\u2019s \u201cplay.\u201d<\/p>

In this way, \u201cplay\u201d then acts as a meaningful form of communication and discovery even though it is typically dismissed as frivolous and childish.[3]<\/span> The energy and noise of children\u2019s \u201cplay\u201d runs counter to the expected quietness and thoughtfulness of the white cube gallery and museums as explored in Carol Duncan\u2019s \u201cThe Art Museum as Ritual.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>This then acts as institutional critique, similar to Kusama\u2019s intended \u201cobliteration\u201d of the white cube gallery previously discussed.[5]<\/span> In 2002, the QAGOMA expected playful energy as the work was meant for young audiences who are naturally boisterous. However, as the audience became older and more diverse, they required the same childish energy to participate. With the proliferation of the Obliteration Room<\/em> in many museums worldwide, play and playful behavior have now become co-opted by museums to drive traction as audiences become more expectant of the \u201cexperience\u201d in which audiences favor events over commodities.[6]<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 17. Video Still, Children\u2019s Toys Detail.
Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012.
Credit to Tate Modern and TateShots.
Still from https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-xNzr-fJHQw&t=43s.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Figure 18. Video Still, Plush Toy Detail.
Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012.
Tate Modern TateShots.
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<\/a><\/p>

Kusama\u2019s work relies on a process of interaction wherein participation is an active form of institutional critique and encourages \u201cplay\u201d within the piece. Play is sparked by the creative atmosphere of the installation in which participants are asked to subvert their normal expectations of museum space and interact with the artwork. The freedom of choice in the exhibition allows for regression to a child-like state in which audiences can then \u201cplay\u201d and be spontaneous. Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em> was originally explicitly meant for children, to whom \u201cplay\u201d is a perfectly reasonable activity. Kusama also literally invites play by the inclusion of children\u2019s toys like stuffed animals and rocking horses in her installations (Fig. 17).[7]<\/span> Play fosters creativity and is a pursuit of pleasure typically scorned by adults for fear that it is childish, not-serious, inappropriate, detached, or disengaged from reality.[8]<\/span><\/a> Play and participation in contemporary art have the potential to become political because they create tangible forms of interaction amongst audience members by allowing for communication outside of capitalist exchange.[9]<\/span> When the participants are given the same goal of placing stickers on the white walls, the action of play in The Obliteration Room <\/em>allows for the creation of a sense of community. Individuals may compete for blank spots, but overall, they share the common \u201cgoal\u201d of working together to \u201cobliterate\u201d the installation. \u201cPlay\u201d also can induce awareness of oppression and inequality and their potential eradication, as well as incite creative thinking that operates outside of societal norms and structures.[10]<\/span><\/a><\/p>

\u201cPlay\u201d exists only when there is an open (or presumed to be open) number of possibilities, so when possibilities are exposed as predetermined, \u201cplay\u201d ceases to exist, and the political potential of play and the appearance of free \u201cplay\u201d is dismantled. It is then assumed that possibilities are constricted or limited. Play fundamentally requires spontaneity or at least the assumption of spontaneity; one must be free from inhibitions. It exists to escape the predetermined rigid social hierarchy and repetitive work as everyone is considered equal and given the same task.[11]<\/span><\/a> There is no privilege given to any participants, regardless of age, sex, class, or social status. Play has the potential to create socio-political ramifications as it allows people to break out of the banality of their everyday life and perform new actions. This potential then allows for the transformative potential of the work to those who participate.<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPart 2:
Later Iterations of the Obliteration Room<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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[1]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cKids & Families \u2013 Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art,\u201d Queensland Art Gallery.<\/p>

[2]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cThe Gallery of Modern Art – Children’s Art Centre,\u201d Brisbane Kids.<\/p>

[3]<\/a> Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 8.<\/p>

[4]<\/a> Carol Duncan, \u201cThe Art Museum as Ritual,\u201d\u00a0The Art Bulletin (New York, N.Y.)<\/em>\u00a077, no. 1 (1995): 10-13.<\/p>

[5]<\/a> O\u2019Doherty, Inside the White Cube, <\/em>15, 25, 49-50.<\/p>

[6]<\/a> Joseph B. Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy<\/em>, 12; Further discussed in the later section, \u201cKusama, Her Brand, and The Experience Economy.\u201d<\/p>

[7]<\/a> Piper, \u201c’The joy of this exhibit is how much it invites play.’\u201d<\/p>

[8]<\/a> Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 9, 37-38.<\/p>

[9]<\/a> Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 9, 37-38.<\/p>

[10]<\/a> Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 9.<\/p>

[11]<\/a> Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 9, 37-38; \u201cNon-competitive playing can reduce alienation in a busy, impersonal world because it enacts an enjoyable bonding force wherein the expression of the unique imagination and perspective of each individual is appreciated.\u201d \u2013Mallett, “Preventing Predictions,\u201d 36.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 1: The Original Obliteration Room and Children \u201cPlay\u201d Children’s Art As mentioned previously, The Obliteration Room was initially commissioned for the Children\u2019s Art Centre at QAGOMA, which comprises two floors of exhibition-related muti-media artistic activities designed for children aged up to twelve, although space is also open to teenagers and adults.[1] Artists who display […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":56,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-518","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/518\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":499,"date":"2024-11-28T02:16:52","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T02:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=499"},"modified":"2024-12-02T22:12:56","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T22:12:56","slug":"list-of-figures","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/conclusion\/list-of-figures\/","title":{"rendered":"List of Figures"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room: Community Building in Action<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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List of Figures<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Figure 1. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2002. <\/em>Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork. <\/em>Gallery 3. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. <\/em>Copyright Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>QAGOMA Imaging. <\/em>Photographer: Natasha Harth.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 2<\/strong>. <\/em><\/span>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2002. <\/em>Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork. <\/em>Gallery 3. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. <\/em>Copyright Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>QAGOMA Imaging. <\/em>Photographer: Natasha Harth.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 3. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama<\/em>, The Obliteration Room, 2002. <\/em>Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork. <\/em>Gallery 3. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. <\/em>Copyright Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>QAGOMA Imaging. <\/em>Photographer: Natasha Harth.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 4.<\/span><\/strong> \u00a0<\/em>Artist’s Drawing. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama<\/em>, Kid\u2019s APT Interactive Artwork, 2002. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Copyright Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 5. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork, 2002. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Gallery 3. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Copyright Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>QAGOMA Imaging. <\/em>Photographer: Natasha Harth.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 6<\/em>.<\/span> <\/strong>Video still. <\/em>Tate Modern Sticker Sheets. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. <\/em>Tate Modern. <\/em>TateShots. <\/em>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-xNzr-fJHQw&t=43s.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 7. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room and Sticker Sheet, 2017. <\/em>Hirshhorn Museum, DC. <\/em>Credit to Setarra at https:\/\/www.setarra.com\/yayoi-kusama-infinity-mirrors-hirshhorn-museum-dc.<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>

Figure 8.\u00a0 <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, Driving Image Show (exhibition poster), 1966. <\/em>18 x 22.5 in. (45.72 x 57.15 cm.). <\/em>https:\/\/www.artnet.com\/artists\/yayoi-kusama\/aggregation-one-thousand-boats-show-driving-image-E2mc79EXIR4AH4PzPn-DRw2.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>

Figure 9.<\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama in her Studio, 1958-1959. Credit: Yayoi Kusama and the Phillips. https:\/\/www.phillips.com\/detail\/yayoi-kusama\/HK010123\/11<\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Figure 10. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama<\/em>, Self-Obliteration Happening, c. 1960. <\/em>Credit to Formidable Mag. <\/em>https:\/\/www.formidablemag.com\/yayoi-kusama\/.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 11. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama in her Narcissus Garden installation, 1966. <\/em>Venice Biennale. <\/em>Credit to Formidable Mag. <\/em>https:\/\/www.formidablemag.com\/yayoi-kusama\/.<\/u><\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 12. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Narcissus Garden, 1966\/2002. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Site-specific work. <\/em>Watermall: 1200 x 2400 x 30cm. <\/em>Mirror Balls: approx. 2000, 18cm diameter each. <\/em>Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 2002. <\/em>Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>Gifted to the Queensland Art Gallery by the Artist. <\/em>Collection: Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Courtesy: Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 13. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama with one of her \u201cAccumulation\u201d pieces, 1966. <\/em>Image credit to Formidable Mag. <\/em>https:\/\/www.formidablemag.com\/yayoi-kusama.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 14. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>The Obliteration Room (Before), 2002\/2012. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012. <\/em>Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. <\/em>Locally sourced furniture and ornamentation, white paint, dot sheets.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 15. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>The Obliteration Room (After), 2002\/2012. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012. <\/em>Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. <\/em>Locally sourced furniture and ornamentation, white paint, dot sheets.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 16.<\/span> <\/em><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (Interior<\/em> Computer detail), 2015. <\/em>Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY. <\/em>Imagine credit to Mindy Bond at the Culture Files. <\/em>https:\/\/www.theculturefiles.com\/yayoi-kusamas-dot-filled-exhibit-at-david-zwirner-closes-saturday\/.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 17. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Children\u2019s Toys Detail. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. <\/em>Tate Modern. <\/em>TateShots. <\/em>Video still of room details. <\/em>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-xNzr-fJHQw&t=43s.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 18. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Plush Toy Detail. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. <\/em>Tate Modern. <\/em>TateShots. <\/em>Video still of room details. <\/em>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-xNzr-fJHQw&t=43s.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 19.<\/span> <\/em><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (Kitchen Detail), 2015. <\/em>David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea. <\/em>Image credit of David Zwirner Gallery. <\/em>https:\/\/www.davidzwirner.com\/exhibitions\/2015\/give-me-love#\/installation-views.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 20.<\/span> <\/em><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, (Before) installation view of The Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>Art Gallery of Ontario. <\/em>Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. <\/em>Dimensions variable. <\/em>The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia. <\/em>Collection of Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>\u00a9 Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Photos by AGO Image Resources.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 21. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, (After) installation view of The Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>Art Gallery of Ontario. <\/em>Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. <\/em>Dimensions variable. <\/em>The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia. <\/em>Collection of Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>\u00a9 Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Photos by AGO Image Resources.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 22. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. <\/em>Tate Modern. <\/em>TateShots. <\/em>Video still of wall patterning.<\/em>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-xNzr-fJHQw&t=43s.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 23.<\/span> <\/em><\/strong>Rainbow Detail. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room, 2022. <\/em>Tate Modern. <\/em>Credit Anna Piper-Thompson and Varsity Magazine. <\/em>https:\/\/www.varsity.co.uk\/arts\/24188.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 24. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, UNIQLO Tate Play: The Obliteration Room, 2022. <\/em>Image: Reece Straw. <\/em>Courtesy of Tate Modern. <\/em>https:\/\/www.stirworld.com\/see-news-yayoi-kusamas-famed-the-obliteration-room-comes-back-to-tate-modern<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 25. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>Hirshhorn Museum. <\/em>Images provided by the Hirshhorn Museum.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 26.<\/span> <\/em><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>Hirshhorn Museum. <\/em>Images provided by the Hirshhorn Museum.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 27. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Hirshhorn Sticker Sheet.<\/em>Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2017. <\/em>Hirshhorn Museum, DC. <\/em>Image credit Lana @ TravelSavvyGal. <\/em>June 1, 2017. <\/em>https:\/\/www.travelsavvygal.com\/kusama-art-exhibitions\/?cn-reloaded=1.<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>

Timelapse Video: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=an0g93vw5j8.<\/a><\/em><\/p>

Figure 28. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Video Still. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. <\/em>Image credit: Alexis Shulman.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 29. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, (Before) installation view of The Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>Art Gallery of Ontario. <\/em>Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. <\/em>Dimensions variable. <\/em>The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia. <\/em>Collection of Queensland Art Gallery.<\/em>\u00a9 Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Photos by AGO Image Resources.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 30. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>Art Gallery of Ontario. <\/em>Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. <\/em>The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia.<\/em>Collection of Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>\u00a9 Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Photos by AGO Image Resources.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 31. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, (After) installation view of The Obliteration Room, 2018. <\/em>Art Gallery of Ontario. <\/em>Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. <\/em>Dimensions variable. <\/em>The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia. <\/em>Collection of Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>\u00a9 Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>Photos by AGO Image Resources.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 32. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Exterior of the Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY.\u00a0<\/em>Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love Exhibition, 2015. <\/em>Image credit to\u00a0Lyman Creative Co. <\/em>https:\/\/lymancreativegroup.com\/blog\/yayoi-kusama-at-the-david-zwirner-gallery<\/span> <\/a><\/em>and https:\/\/www.davidzwirner.com\/exhibitions\/2015\/give-me-love<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>

Figure 33. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (Exterior), 2015. <\/em>David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea. <\/em>Image credit of David Zwirner Gallery. <\/em>https:\/\/www.davidzwirner.com\/exhibitions\/2015\/give-me-love#\/installation-views.<\/em><\/a><\/p>

Figure 34. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Entrance to the Kusama Exhibit and The Obliteration Room. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015. <\/em>Image credit to Lyman Creative Co. <\/em>https:\/\/lymancreativegroup.com\/blog\/yayoi-kusama-at-the-david-zwirner-gallery.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>

Figure 35. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Entrance to the Kusama Exhibit and The Obliteration Room. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015. <\/em>Image credit to Lyman Creative Co. <\/em>https:\/\/lymancreativegroup.com\/blog\/yayoi-kusama-at-the-david-zwirner-gallery.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>

Figure 36. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Entrance to the Kusama Exhibit and The Obliteration Room. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015. <\/em>Image credit to Lyman Creative Co. <\/em>https:\/\/lymancreativegroup.com\/blog\/yayoi-kusama-at-the-david-zwirner-gallery.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>

Figure 37. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Inside of The Obliteration Room. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015. <\/em>Image credit to Lyman Creative Co. <\/em>https:\/\/lymancreativegroup.com\/blog\/yayoi-kusama-at-the-david-zwirner-gallery.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>

Figure 38. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Inside of The Obliteration Room. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015. <\/em>Image credit to Lyman Creative Co. <\/em>https:\/\/lymancreativegroup.com\/blog\/yayoi-kusama-at-the-david-zwirner-gallery.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>

Figure 39. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Soul Under the Moon, 2002. <\/em>Yayoi Kusama. <\/em>APT 2002: Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. <\/em>Mirror\/Infinity Room. <\/em>QAGOMA. <\/em>Copyright Queensland Art Gallery. <\/em>QAGOMA Imaging. <\/em>Photographer: Natasha Harth.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 40. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>Yayoi Kusama for the Yayoi Kusama x Louis Vuitton Ad Campaign: Infinity and Beyond, 2023. <\/em>Courtesy of Louis Vuitton.<\/em><\/p>

Figure 41. <\/em><\/span><\/strong>eBay Listing for an \u201cObliteration Room\u201d Sticker Sheet. <\/em>Listed by SGI51 Treasures, 2023. <\/em>https:\/\/www.ebay.com\/itm\/304619237982.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room: Community Building in Action List of Figures Figure 1. Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2002. Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork. Gallery 3. QAGOMA. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. Copyright Queensland Art Gallery. QAGOMA Imaging. Photographer: Natasha Harth. Figure 2. Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2002. Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork. Gallery 3. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":36,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-499","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/499\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":345,"date":"2024-04-05T17:40:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T17:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=345"},"modified":"2024-12-02T22:03:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T22:03:38","slug":"about-menu","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/conclusion\/about-menu\/","title":{"rendered":"Supplementary Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Supplementary Materials<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Obliteration Room<\/i>, 2018<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Supplementary Materials The Obliteration Room, 2018 High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia List of Figures Home<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":36,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-345","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/345\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":314,"date":"2024-04-05T16:58:53","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T16:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=314"},"modified":"2024-11-28T23:15:19","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T23:15:19","slug":"time-versus-the-timeless-museum-space","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/part-1-the-original-obliteration-room\/time-versus-the-timeless-museum-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Time versus the Timeless Museum Space"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Part 1: The Original Obliteration Room and Children's Play<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Time Versus the Timeless Museum Space<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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As Brian O\u2019Doherty argues in his book, Inside the White Cube<\/em>, the white gallery space historically existed as a way to frame artworks as both modern and timeless. \u00a0The fully white gallery space isolated an artwork from all other context and historical cues, thereby eradicating the notion of time and instead imbuing an art piece with a sense of timelessness and permanence.[1]<\/a> Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room, <\/em>however, is explicitly not a timeless space. The work critiques the white gallery space by adding a sense of time back into a formerly uncontextualized space. By bringing the audience into the present, Kusama is grounding them in a familiar space as well as allowing the work to have more realistic stakes for the audience. They are not \u201cobliterating\u201d a random space, they are \u201cobliterating\u201d a space in which they have a personal connection. Her rooms communicate a very concrete time as they are created with furniture bought by the museum and intended to reflect the years in which they are installed in the museum. Her 2002 Obliteration Room <\/em>at the QAGOMA features a CRT TV and large radio, (Fig. 3), while her 2015 room at the Zwirner Gallery includes a compact touchpad computer (Fig. 16), and her 2018 room at the AGO includes a flat-screen computer monitor and attached keyboard. These are technologies that would not have been created during her initial conception of the art piece and then implies that the rooms reflect their contemporary years instead of conveying a sense of permanence or timelessness.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 3. Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2002 Kids\u2019 APT Interactive Artwork Gallery 3 QAGOMA Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Copyright Queensland Art Gallery QAGOMA Imaging Photographer: Natasha Harth<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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O\u2019Doherty also argues that the pristine white of the gallery space is intruded upon by both the furniture that the gallery provides for viewers to sit and by the bodies of the viewers themselves. He goes further to suggest that, in three-dimensional real spaces that are replicated and displayed as art in a gallery, the spectators then act as trespassers within the space. The \u201ctrespassing\u201d visitor, unable to interact with the space, is then acutely aware of the space that their body takes up within the gallery and therefore plays down their body language and remains silent. Kusama\u2019s rooms, while appropriating the living room for artistic purposes, are also explicitly not direct quotations. The white paint on all the surfaces transforms a familiar domestic room into an unfamiliar, alienating space, thereby forcing the participants to consider their own interactions with the room and its furnishings. Audiences are met with a traditionally private, invitation-only space and are welcomed inside by Kusama and the hosting museums. As an outsider, they are then explicitly asked to interact with and alter the formerly private space with Kusama acting as owner of the space but also as hospitable host. By offering up a formerly private space, Kusama is not only bringing her audience together in a shared sacred space, she is doing so in a present and current space that they would be familiar with, making the experience more personal and relatable.<\/p>

Additionally, before the stickers, the white gallery walls bleed into every surface in The Obliteration Room.<\/em>Rather than act as framing devices, Kusama removed any division between the white gallery walls and her art.[2]<\/a> The walls act as participants within the work, rather than as borders. Visitors are also participants now, as they are encouraged by Kusama to touch the space and to actively \u201cobliterate\u201d it, slowly covering all white areas. As the stickers are added, the space of the gallery as delineated by the white color, slowly disappears, being \u201cobliterated\u201d by the brightly colored dots, and is replaced with circular rainbow stickers.<\/p>

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Figure 16. Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (Interior Computer detail), 2015 Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY Imagine credit to Mindy Bond at the Culture Files https:\/\/www.theculturefiles.com\/yayoi-kusamas-dot-filled-exhibit-at-david-zwirner-closes-saturday\/<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKusama's Dots and the Obliteration Theory<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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[1]<\/a> O\u2019Doherty, Inside the White Cube, <\/em>14–<\/em>15.<\/p>

[2]<\/a> O\u2019Doherty, Inside the White Cube, <\/em>15, 25, 49-50.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 1: The Original Obliteration Room and Children’s Play Time Versus the Timeless Museum Space As Brian O\u2019Doherty argues in his book, Inside the White Cube, the white gallery space historically existed as a way to frame artworks as both modern and timeless. \u00a0The fully white gallery space isolated an artwork from all other context […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":56,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-314","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/314\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310,"date":"2024-04-05T16:46:28","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T16:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=310"},"modified":"2024-12-02T22:08:11","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T22:08:11","slug":"literature-review","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/literature-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Literature Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room: Community Building in Action<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Literature Review<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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On Kusama<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yayoi Kusama and her artworks are most frequently discussed in relation to her biography, mental illness diagnoses, and her Infinity Rooms<\/em>, which have drawn unrivaled attention on social media. In her catalog Yayoi Kusama<\/em>, Frances Morris details the timeline of Kusama\u2019s life and work, from her start in Japan through the 2012 Yayoi Kusama Exhibition at Tate Modern. Morris\u2019 timeline offers a biography of Kusama that tracks the different motifs in her work, specifically referencing polka dots, self-documentation, installation works, dioramas and works that involve audience participation to create a background for Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em>. In a similar vein, Jo Applin\u2019s essay in Morris\u2019 book entitled \u201cI\u2019m Here, but Nothing: Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Environments\u201d elaborates on Kusama\u2019s Environments and Happenings as they occurred in the 19607s-70s and her more recent environments of the 1990s- 2000s. Applin compares the practice of installation art to Kusama\u2019s own lived environment, such as her voluntary move into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo and her moves between Japan and New York. Applin further discusses how she believes that Kusama\u2019s environments function as a visualization of Kusama\u2019s psyche in which she fears that she will \u201cdissolve\u201d or psychologically break down. Additionally, Applin explains that Kusama\u2019s shared environments create a shared public communal sphere rather than an individual private world, which she then compares to the goals of Kusama\u2019s Happenings and her \u201cbody festivals\u201d from 1967 to 1969. Applin writes that Kusama\u2019s installed environments, and her Happenings share a desire to bring together diverse subjects as onlookers, participants, and collaborators in a space that has been, she claims, only loosely scripted by Kusama.[1]<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile, Heather Lenz\u2019s 2018 documentary \u201cKusama – Infinity<\/em>\u201d includes interviews with several curators, Kusama\u2019s best friends, and even the artist herself.[2]<\/span> Lenz addresses more of Kusama\u2019s experiences with her mental health and provides a more recent view of her artistic career after her major resurgence in popularity in the 2000s.[3]<\/span> \u00a0<\/span>The documentary offers a look back at Kusama\u2019s childhood, her move to New York and her integration into the New York art world, and the director interviews her contemporaries and some gallery owners.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the book accompanying Yayoi Kusama\u2019s first retrospective in China, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now<\/em> at the M+ in 2022, Doryun Chung discusses Kusama\u2019s resurgence in the 1990s as a global icon in the essay \u201cNarcissus Garden: How Yayoi Kusama Has Become a Global Cultural Icon and What She and Her Art Can Teach Us about the Way We Exist in the World Now.\u201d[4]<\/span> Chung explains that in 1993 Kusama represented Japan in the Venice Biennale which sparked her return into the global art consciousness and led to an increase in her crossovers with popular culture and well-known brands, like Issey Miyake, Louis Vuitton, Madame Tussauds, and Coca-Cola, which pushed her further into public awareness. Chung argues that the relationship between fashion and art enhances brand image, making concrete Kusama\u2019s brand identification with her name, her signature motif, polka dots, and her now iconic face and crimson wig.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As mentioned earlier, the longevity of T<\/em>he<\/em> Obliteration Room <\/em>is directly related to Yayoi Kusama\u2019s careful persona branding.[5]<\/span> Such phenomenon has attracted some scholarly attention, too (Fig. 36). According to Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Kusama began to challenge and confront her viewers with the limitations of Western concepts of identity and of consumption of the female body by physically incorporating her own Japanese female body into her art in the 1960s. She also argues that Kusama\u2019s art was born from her upbringing in postwar Japan and amongst disseminated Buddhist philosophy with a goal of the loss of the self. However, Kusama insists on a non-Buddhist interpretation of her works. Foster argues that these two cultural practices inspired Kusama\u2019s use of her own body as well as outside participants, such as in her Happenings and her film Kusama\u2019s Self Obliteration <\/em>(1967), but also in her later Obliteration Room<\/em>. As such, Kusama\u2019s work is a disruption of the Western ideas of identity, self, ethnicity, sex and sexuality, and the physical body.[6]<\/span><\/p>

On \u201cPlay\u201d<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cPlay\u201d is a key concept for my analysis of The Obliteration Room<\/em>. Scholars have discussed the politics of \u201cplay\u201d or a return to a childlike state of interaction, specifically in reference to children\u2019s toys turned into high art meant for adults. In Samantha Mallet\u2019s dissertation “Preventing Predictions: The Political Possibilities of Play and Aesthetics in Contemporary Installation Art and Works by Carsten H\u00f6ller and Gabriel Orozco,” she discusses the politics behind \u201cplay,\u201d a practice in which new modes of installation art can activate their viewer as an active participant and collaborator in the art piece through a return to \u201cplay\u201d as a meaningful form of communication and community building.[7]<\/span> Mallet further argues that play exists as a means to escape the predetermined rigid social hierarchy and repetitive work and can incite thinking that operates outside of societal norms and structures. Mallet\u2019s definition of \u201cplay\u201d not only directly relates to the original and intended audience of the work \u2013 children – but also explains why Kusama\u2019s work became popular for adults as well as children and allows for an understanding of the social dynamics created in The<\/em> Obliteration Room. <\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The concept of \u201cplay\u201d is also discussed by Donald W. Winnicott in his essay \u201cWhy Children Play,\u201d in which he uses psychoanalysis to argue that children (and adults to some extent) play to master anxiety and impulses that can lead to anxiety when the child is not in control of a situation. Winnicott theorizes that \u201cplay\u201d allows children to regain a form of control that would cause anxiety if not confronted and dealt with. \u201cPlay\u201d allows children to be the managers of their own environment upon which they would normally not have influence. He goes on to explain that \u201cplay\u201d exists within a place and a time and is much more inspired when children are amongst others who are willing and able to also be playful. Winnicott\u2019s assertion that \u201cplay\u201d is more enthusiastic in groups lends itself well to Kusama\u2019s creation of community. Kusama\u2019s installations foster play through communal creative activity in which all participants are willing and able to be playful. Additionally, Winnicott\u2019s theories that excess anxiety in children leads to compulsive or repetitive play also connect well with The Obliteration Room<\/em>, whose central activity is a communally repetitive action repeated with various sticker colors.[8]<\/span> Kusama\u2019s first Obliteration Room<\/em> was meant exclusively as an art installation for children, engaging with Winnicott\u2019s theories of play in children. It was then expanded to include adults as well. Applying Winnicott\u2019s theories to adults would make sense as adults are often play companions to children and require their own anxieties to be managed in meaningful ways.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 According to Jacqueline Tuny at the QAGOMA, \u201cThe artist has specified that the sticker dots should not be used to make shapes, pictures or spell out names. Staff working in The Obliteration Room<\/em> are asked to discretely remove evidence of this. Stickers may also be removed for safety reasons (e.g. if they are placed on lights, exit signs, sensors and water sprinklers).\u201d[9]<\/span> The artist never explained why she did not allow representational and informational dots here, but Malina Mallos, explained that the rules only allow children to be obliterated anywhere, including themselves.[10]<\/span> Melina Mallos \u00a0<\/em>also discusses the QAGOMA\u2019s embrace of children\u2019s audiences through their Children\u2019s Art Centre, a dedicated space for children and families. She argues that Kusama\u2019s The Obliteration Room, <\/em>specifically developed for Kids\u2019 APT 2002 consisted of the instructions to the QAGOMA to \u201ccreate a room similar to an Australian living room, furnish it with typical household items, paint the room and all its contents white, give children colored dots of various sizes, and invite them to \u201cobliterate\u201d the whole environment by sticking dots everywhere (including, if they wished, on themselves).\u201d[11]<\/span> Here, Mallos details the instructions that Kusama gave to the QAGOMA, which allows the museum freedom to choose the smaller details of the installation, like chairs, games, or other inclusions that they deem will make the room similar to an Australian living room.<\/p>

On Community<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kusama is mainly discussed in terms of her biography, her mental illness diagnoses, her polka dot obliteration theories, and her Infinity Rooms<\/em>, but scholars have not discussed her focus on community in artworks other than in her Happenings. As I will demonstrate, the Obliteration <\/em>provides an intersection between play and community, the scholars D.W. McMillan and D.M. Chavis define the term \u201ccommunity\u201d as a shared feeling of belonging to both one another and to the group with the four elements of membership, influence, integration, fulfillment of needs, and a shared emotional connection.[12]<\/span> On the other hand, scholar Claire Bishop, in Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship<\/em>, defines \u201ccommunity\u201d created by art as art where the emphasis is placed on social processes rather than permanent outcomes and on a group attitude rather than on achievement.[13]<\/span> As such, the \u201ccommunity\u201d in The Obliteration Room<\/em> can be defined in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to the combined sticker remnants left by the participants over the course of the entire exhibition of the installation. This community is only dismantled when the installation is torn down at the end of its exhibition, and the stickers are removed. It is not dismantled when the physical bodies of the participants leave the space. On the other hand, the community in The Obliteration Room <\/em>may exist as a group of participants, but they are ultimately led and instructed by Kusama, who has the final authoritarian say over the results. They are allowed to make their own choices, though any choice that violates Kusama\u2019s predetermined rules would be removed from the installation.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The design of The Obliteration Room <\/em>also begs scholarly attention to analyze it from the angle of participatory art. Participatory art or \u201crelational aesthetics\u201d is art in which the audience is given the structure to (temporarily) create a community through a work of art that examines the realm of human interactions.[14] <\/span>Relational art, as termed by Nicolas Bourriaud, revolves around the interactions between participating parties, creating art that is a social exchange and an experience rather than a commodity.[15]<\/span> Bourriaud argues that this collaboration has the potential to become a democratic space in that all participants are given the same task and asked to communicate with one another. Claire Bishop, however, disagrees and instead argues that since all participants are drawn together by an already-present common interest in art, demonstrated by their attendance at the exhibition, the space is not fully democratic.[16]<\/span> Kusama\u2019s pre-set rules make The Obliteration Room<\/em> an installation that is more in line with Bishop\u2019s definition. Kusama\u2019s installation acts as participatory art in the way that it physically records community and asks audiences to interact with the work through a set of specific rules set by Kusama, herself.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIntroduction<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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[1]<\/span> Frances Morris and Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama \/ Edited by Frances Morris; with Contributions by Jo Applin, Juliet Mitchell, Frances Morris, Mignon Nixon, Rachel Taylor, Midori Yamamura.<\/em> New York: D.A.P.\/Distributed Art Publishers, 2012.<\/p>

[2]<\/span> The museum professionals interviewed are Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim Museum, Beate Sirota Gordon, Former Performing Arts Director Japan Society and Asia Society, Frances Morris, director at the Tate Modern, Midori Yamamura.<\/p>

[3]<\/span> Heather Lenz, dir. 2018. Kusama – Infinity<\/em>. Featuring Yayoi Kusama. Magnolia Pictures.<\/p>

[4]<\/span> Doryun Chung, \u201cNarcissus Garden: How Yayoi Kusama Has Become a Global Cultural Icon and What She and Her Art Can Teach Us about the Way We Exist in the World Now,\u201d in Yayoi Kusama: 1945-Now \/ Edited by Doryun Chong and Mika Yoshitake.<\/em>\u00a0London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2022, 259-275.<\/p>

[5]<\/span> Such as luxury fashion brand Louis Vuitton\u2019s use of her signature polka dot and the promotional images for her solo artistic shows at museums like the High, the Hirshhorn, and the Zwirner Gallery.<\/p>

[6]<\/span> Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, \u201cSelf-Stylization and Performativity in the Work of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama and Mariko Mori,\u201d Quarterly Review of Film and Video<\/em> 27, no. 4 (2010): 267-275.<\/p>

[7]<\/span> Mallett, “Preventing Predictions: The Political Possibilities of Play and Aesthetics in Contemporary Installation Art and Works by Carsten H\u00f6ller and Gabriel Orozco,” (University of Alberta, 2012): 40.<\/p>

[8]<\/span> Donald W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality [by] D. W. Winnicott, <\/em>London: Tavistock Publications, 1980, 40-44.<\/p>

[9]<\/span> Tunny, email message, August 4, 2023.<\/p>

[10]<\/span> Melina Mallos, \u201cCollaboration Is the Key: Artists, Museums, and Children,\u201d The Journal of Museum Education <\/em>37, no. 1 (2012): 69\u201380.<\/p>

[11]<\/span> Mallos, 74.<\/p>

[12]<\/span> D.W. McMillan, & D.M. Chavis, 1986, “Sense of community: A definition and theory,\u201d Journal of Community Psychology, 14<\/em>(1): 6\u201323.<\/p>

[13]<\/span> Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship,<\/em> London: Verso, 2012.<\/p>

[14]<\/span> Bishop, Installation Art, <\/em>116; Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics<\/em>, (N.p.: Les Presses du r\u00e9el, 2002): 44.<\/p>

[15]<\/span> Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 68.<\/p>

[16]<\/span> Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics,<\/em> 16; Claire Bishop, \u201cAntagonism and Relational Aesthetics,\u201d October <\/em>110 (Autumn 2004): 54; Mallett, \u201cPreventing Predictions,\u201d 54.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room: Community Building in Action Literature Review On Kusama \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yayoi Kusama and her artworks are most frequently discussed in relation to her biography, mental illness diagnoses, and her Infinity Rooms, which have drawn unrivaled attention on social media. In her catalog Yayoi Kusama, Frances Morris details the timeline of Kusama\u2019s life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-310","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":243,"date":"2024-04-02T17:23:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T17:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=243"},"modified":"2024-12-04T01:05:41","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T01:05:41","slug":"changed-and-unchanged","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/part-2-later-iterations-of-the-obliteration-rooms\/changed-and-unchanged\/","title":{"rendered":"Changed and Unchanged"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Changed and Unchanged<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Most recently, Kusama installed The Obliteration Room<\/em> at QAGOMA in 2011-2012, the Tate Modern in 2012 (and again in 2022 with Uniqlo Tate Play), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2017, the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2018, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Indonesia (MACAN) in 2018, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA in 2018 through 2019.[1]<\/span><\/a><\/p>

By only changing the size of the room and the furniture, Kusama was able to communicate to her adult audiences that this formerly child-focused artwork was meant for them to place them into a similar playful headspace like the ones that they experienced as children. She kept the child-friendly stickers and even some of the children\u2019s toys, like the plastic and plush animals included in both the original room and the Tate Modern. These larger adult spaces are meant to signal a domestic living space in which both adults and children live. Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em> represents an idealized domestic space in which a family lives with their children. Children may have been sized out of the room, but they are not forgotten. The original goals of the artwork, to create a space where play and community building through a common goal can flourish, remain intact after the change.<\/p>

Each of these later iterations varied slightly, from the types and shapes of the furniture and decorations included to the size and shape of the gallery space, as well as at least two different sticker sheet patterns. As with the layout and specific elements in the room, the conditions of interactivity in the room also depended on the museum and curator. For example, in the 2012 version assembled in the Tate Modern in London, viewers were allowed to sit on and manipulate the furniture, while in the 2018 showing of The Obliteration Room <\/em>at the High Museum, interaction with the furniture was limited.[2]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 6. Video Still Tate Modern Sticker Sheets, 2012.
Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. Tate Modern, TateShots.
Credit to Tate Modern, TateShots in video linked below.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Figure 22. Obliteration Room Pattern, Tate Modern, 2012.
Video still of wall patterning.
Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2012. Tate Modern, TateShots.
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In 2011-2012, the Obliteration Room<\/em> was once again installed at the QAGOMA, this time as a fully enclosed space with adult-sized furniture. Whereas the first 2002 Obliteration Room<\/em> was installed inside a larger gallery space as a small room with three half-walls, an open doorway, and no ceiling, the 2011 iteration was its own room in the gallery. In this later installation, Kusama included two conjoined spaces of a Western home that connected in one large room. The furniture was no longer child-sized and comfortably fit full-grown adults. The first section of the 2011 room included a dining area complete with an empty wooden bookshelf, three overhanging lamps, a set dining room table with plates, cups and teacups, bowls, six wooden chairs, and a painted white potted fiddle-leaf plant set on an elevated tripod stand. The second section of the room contained a living room scene with two couches with pillows and cushions facing each other, a coffee table, a desk and chair set, and a large bookshelf, which covers the entire end wall decorated with framed white pictures and other assorted knick-knacks traditionally found in Western homes like plates and books (Figs. 5 and 6). \u00a0<\/p>

Each time the Obliteration Room <\/em>is displayed, the size of the room differs as it is determined by the museum and curator. The hosting venue is also responsible for sourcing the furniture items and objects displayed, as these are never shared between venues. Furniture items and objects are either disposed of or recycled following sticker removal after the end of the exhibition period.[3]<\/span> Although each venue can cater The Obliteration Room <\/em>to their specific location and\/or time period, each of the iterations of The<\/em> Obliteration Room<\/em> follows the same basic style of plush or wooden Western furniture, which is either locally sourced or brand-identified, as in the 2022 Uniqlo sponsored version. The design intent appears to create the feel of a typical domestic living space in both scale and content everything within the space is painted white by the staff at the hosting venue.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 23. Rainbow Detail. Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room, 2022, Tate Modern. Credit: Anna Piper-Thompson and Varsity Magazine. https:\/\/www.varsity.co.uk\/arts\/24188.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Figure 24. Yayoi Kusama, UNIQLO Tate Play: The Obliteration Room, 2022.
Image: Reece Straw. Courtesy of Tate Modern. https:\/\/www.stirworld.com\/see-news-yayoi-kusamas-famed-the-obliteration-room-comes-back-to-tate-modern.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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At the Tate Modern in 2012, The Obliteration Room<\/em> consisted of a single gallery space with furniture indicative of either a living room or family room or some amalgamation of the two. The space had a large dining table and chairs, bookshelves, stools, children\u2019s toys, a rocking horse, a basket, a drop-zone (a purse, shoes, and a table), a children\u2019s walker, plush toys, and pillows. In a video produced by TateShots and promoted by the museum as an advertisement, the director of the Tate Modern and curator of Kusama\u2019s exhibition, Frances Morris, states that visitors are invited to place the stickers \u201canywhere they like in the room, according to any pattern, any idea they have\u2026anything they like they can do with the stickers.\u201d[4]<\/span> Taking the official Tate Modern video and her own interview at face value, Morris has outwardly chosen to change the rules governing the artwork. Morris\u2019 different, less strict instructions for patterning enabled differences in appearance between the stickered walls of the Tate and the other versions of the installation. As seen in the video, some areas of the walls of the Tate gallery were covered in large swaths of the same-colored stickers, allowing for large blocks of patterned color (Fig. 22). Ten years later, in the 2022 Obliteration Room<\/em> at the Tate Modern, participants were again presumably allowed more freedom than originally allowed in the 2002 rules, as the dots were used to create a large rainbow pattern that spanned multiple rooms (Fig. 23).[5]<\/span> This later version of the installation marked the first time that the artwork had transitioned back to its original commissioning purpose as an installation with short walls meant for surveillance that was not entirely an enveloping space.<\/p>

In the same 2022 exhibit in which audiences were allowed more freedom, the Tate Modern partnered with the Japanese brand UNIQLO to both sponsor and create their version of The Obliteration Room. <\/em>[6] <\/span>The 2022 room was also advertised specifically as a \u201cUNIQLO Tate Play\u201d event for audiences of all ages.[7]<\/span> This branding acted as a way for the Tate to fund the exhibition of the Kusama work, commodifying the work and outwardly signaling that this event included children through the slogan \u201cfor audiences of all ages.\u201d[8]<\/span> With marketing indicating that the space was firstly meant for children, the Tate promoted a return to the original conditions of the work\u2019s installation, i.e., a children\u2019s exhibit. The Tate even erected a modified version of the shorter, non-encompassing walls of the first edition room (Fig. 24). These walls are short enough that they do not touch the ceiling but are not so short as to be child-sized as in the 2002 version when they were approximately 4 to 5 feet tall. The photographs were taken from a bird\u2019s-eye view in which the entire installation could be seen, but which also replicated the effects of a parent in 2002 peering at their children over the installation wall to make sure they were doing okay.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 25. Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2018, Hirshhorn Museum.
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Figure 26. Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2018, Hirshhorn Museum.
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The Hirshhorn Museum\u2019s Obliteration Room <\/em>from 2017 was part of the blockbuster exhibition \u201cYayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors<\/a>,\u201d which welcomed 475,000 visitors, which was the highest spring visitation in the museum\u2019s history and double the average attendance for that period.[9] <\/span>The installation consisted of a single room in the gallery, which acted as a combined living room and kitchen space (Fig. 23 and 24). The space included explicitly adult objects such as a wire rack with wine bottles, a coffee machine, and a blender, as well as other decorative objects like a fruit bowl with fake fruit and a working piano and bench, all of which were coated in white paint. Audiences were invited to sit on and interact with the furniture as well as play the piano, resulting in the stickers on the piano keys and underfoot being worn down by repeated exposure or rubbing.[10]<\/span><\/p>

Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em> in the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), exhibited in 2018, was spread across two gallery rooms, an \u201cindoor\u201d space divided into a dining room and a living room and an \u201coutdoor\u201d space signifying a backyard area (Fig. 25 and 26).[11]<\/span> In the \u201coutdoor\u201d space, the AGO incorporated two adult-sized wooden chairs and one child-sized plastic lawn chair, a bike, a fire pit (including wooden logs and wire cover\/grate), and a trellis complete with painted white fake plants hanging from the wall. The indoor living room and dining room were separated from the outdoor area by a large, plush couch turned to face the four open doors that opened into the \u201coutdoor\u201d room. The couch created a partition between the living and dining room areas, making the space appear to have three distinct areas, unlike previous iterations in which the dining and living rooms formed one complete space. The AGO\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em> also had a slim desktop computer and keyboard, specific to the year in which the work was seen versus the year in which it was devised. (Fig. 12).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 27. Hirshhorn Sticker Sheet, Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2017, Hirshhorn Museum, DC.
Image credit: Lana @ TravelSavvyGal, June 1, 2017. https:\/\/www.travelsavvygal.com\/kusama-art-exhibitions\/?cn-reloaded=1.
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Figure 28. Video still. Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room, 2018,
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.
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The AGO, like the Hirshhorn, used the six-sticker sheet as opposed to the larger twenty-eight-sticker sheet. The smaller sheet does not include pink dots while the larger sheet does (Fig. 6). The lack of pink changes the entire color scheme of the room. Rooms with six stickers have a more primary rainbow appearance, while rooms with the twenty-eight-sticker sheet have an extra-spectral rainbow color scheme.<\/p>

\u00a0In her 2002 drawing, Kusama pictured children placing stickers on their bodies, entwining their polka dotted selves with the polka-dotted space (Fig. 4). Somewhere along the years that the work has been exhibited, Kusama\u2019s instructions or intentions have been changed for an unknown reason. These changes allow for different amounts of options and freedoms for stickering for participating audiences. Audiences with more lax rules may apply stickers to their bodies or even in figurative patterns on the walls of the room. For example, in 2018, at the AGO, participants were explicitly instructed not to place stickers on their bodies. [12]<\/span>\u00a0The prohibition of patterning and representational dotting are the consistent rules penetrating all the iterations of The Obliteration Room<\/em>, though.<\/p>

In terms of the stickers, the exact sheet of stickers depends on the hosting museum and is either a sheet of six red, orange, yellow, green, and blue stickers or a sheet of twenty-eight stickers of all the aforementioned colors plus an extra pink shade.[13]<\/span> Both sheets have three sizes of circular stickers \u00ad\u00ad\u2013 small, medium, and large\u2014but the number of each varies the given total number of stickers on the sheet. At the end of the exhibition run, almost every square inch of the previously painted white areas, including the ceiling, floor, and walls, were covered with stickers. Some of the stickers overlap with others some use the smaller stickers to create designs within the larger stickers and follow snaking, linear clusters. In some spaces, audience members have collaborated to cover large areas with the same color stickers. Some stickers have been ripped into halves and thirds to further create shapes and designs onto the white spaces. Some visitors have even utilized the stickers to create their own three-dimensional additions to the rooms, e.g. creating chains that hang off the lamps (Fig. 28). The smaller, rounded shape of teacups means that larger stickers hang off the rim or bunch up due to air bubbles. The surfaces also change the adherence of the stickers. Fabric surfaces tend to attract and hold fewer stickers than the walls, for instance. Consequently, The Obliteration Room <\/em>will differ in appearance every time it is installed since it is the gallery visitor, not just the artist, who creates the visual appearance of the work with their sticker placement. Each sticker contributes to the collective of stickers used over the course of the exhibition. The work is technically always incomplete and is not a self-sufficient and autonomous entity.[14]<\/span> There is no singular outcome, and no singular \u201cfinished\u201d appearance. At the end of the allotted exhibition time, the gallery staff comes in, removes the stickers, erasing the work of participants, and allows the work to be temporarily destroyed until a future reconstruction.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Scholars Adan Jerreat-Poole and Sarah Brophy noted that amongst the 2018 #InfiniteKusama selfies, participants recorded themselves circumventing the rules by placing stickers on their own bodies. Such pictures comprise evidence that rule-breaking existed alongside people following the rules and listening to staff instructions.[15]<\/span> Such specific rules provide audiences with the paradox that by explicitly instructing audiences what not to do with the stickers, the staff are giving audiences exact examples and new ideas of what can be done with them. Rule-breaking also implies that museum staff are lax with the rules. It shows the realistic actualization of mediated environments. Kusama and museums can plan for all possible outcomes, but the actual occurrences will always vary from the plans. Participants similarly broke the dictated rules at the Zwirner Gallery installation when they removed stickers from the gallery and placed them on the brick walls outside of the exhibition (Fig. 32).\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 29. Yayoi Kusama, installation view of The Obliteration Room, AGO, 2018.
Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. Dimensions variable. The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia.
Collection of Queensland Art Gallery. \u00a9 Yayoi Kusama.
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Figure 30. Yayoi Kusama, installation view of The Obliteration Room, AGO, 2018.
Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. Dimensions variable. The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia.
Collection of Queensland Art Gallery. \u00a9 Yayoi Kusama.
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Figure 31. Yayoi Kusama, installation view of The Obliteration Room, AGO, 2018.
Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. Dimensions variable. The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia.
Collection of Queensland Art Gallery. \u00a9 Yayoi Kusama.
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During the 2015 exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea, New York, Obliteration Room <\/em>stickers left the space of the installation. They were taken outside by audiences and placed on the brick exterior of the gallery (Fig. 32). There are more than twenty-eight stickers in Figure 32<\/em>\u00a0alone, meaning that many people placed stickers on the outside walls. At the very least, the new outdoor \u201cobliteration wall\u201d consisted of two twenty-eight sticker pads, assuming that at least one full sheet was saved and used outside. In this way, Kusama\u2019s art inspired the act of stickering to extend beyond her art piece and to continue the world outside the museum.<\/p>

Also, at the Zwirner Gallery, Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em> again consisted of a room-within-a-room installation. The installation was part of her 2015 solo show at the gallery, Give Me Love<\/em>. For this, a full-sized single-story suburban house was built inside the gallery.[16]<\/span> Both the overhead door of the room that held the house that contained the Obliteration Room<\/em> and the front door of the Obliteration Room<\/em> itself were left to accommodate a large line of guests. This means that the gallery itself was not an enclosed space, and visitors could see the line of people waiting outside, breaking the illusion of a fully encompassing space. (Fig. 34).\u00a0 But at the same time, the long lines fostered a sense of community within the exhibition, or at least the feeling that the participants were not alone in their stickering of work.<\/p>

Kusama\u2019s popularity has led to larger audiences at museums that are trying to appeal to contemporary viewers who want experiences, which then means lines and waiting lists for her rooms. Large lines change the ways in which The Obliteration Room<\/em> is interacted with. Community can be created before, during, and after interaction with the installation.<\/p>

The exterior of the Obliteration Room<\/em> Zwirner house was not painted white and was instead left in its natural colors. Only the interior was painted white. The exterior was complete with siding, windows, and shutters; the American flag hung on a flagpole, a mailbox, and the house number \u201c9393\u201d spelled out in separate metal numerals.[17]<\/span> The house also had a small patio with a plastic lawn chair and a set of concrete steps leading up to the entrance followed by a welcome mat in the doorway and a lit porch light. The inside of the house was then comprised of white rooms and white furniture where stickers from the twenty-eight-dot sticker sheet could be placed. The inside looked like the previous Obliteration Rooms<\/em>, with a large combined single room that consisted of a living room, dining room, and kitchen furniture. Photographs documenting the installation reveal a lack of stickers on the exterior of the home, making it reasonable to assume that stickers were only allowed to be placed on the white interior. This 2015 Obliteration Room<\/em> was meant to imitate an undeniably American space, from the traditional suburban style architecture to the national flag hanging from the fa\u00e7ade, to specifically appeal to American Zwirner Gallery participants. This is a departure from its original instructions for a modern style domestic space. Following that, I conclude that the decor is meant to reflect the country in which it is based. Appealing to participants with homes and furniture that would be familiar to them allows for the entirely white room to feel even more unfamiliar after participants enter the house.<\/p>

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Figure 32. Exterior of the Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, during \"Give Me Love,\" 2015.
Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love Exhibition, 2015. Credit to Lyman Creative Co.
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Figure 33. Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (Exterior), 2015.
David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY.
Image credit of David Zwirner Gallery.
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Figure 34. Entrance to the Kusama Exhibit at David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015.
Image credit to Lyman Creative Co.
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Figure 35. Entrance to the Kusama Exhibit and The Obliteration Room David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015.
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Figure 36. Entrance to the Kusama Exhibit and The Obliteration Room, David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015.
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This full-sized home built to house The Obliteration Room <\/em>is the closest that an adult-sized Obliteration Room<\/em> has come to recreating the feel of Kusama\u2019s drawing of an idealized 2002 child-sized first installation. Kusama initially planned for the Obliteration Room<\/em> to be a fully immersive experience where participants could feel like they were experiencing the obliteration of both themselves and the home they were in. In her 2002 iteration, changes were made, which meant that the installation would be child-safe but prevented a full immersion into the artwork. The 2015 Zwirner iteration of the artwork not only had a roof but also existed as a separate space from the other rooms in the Zwirner Gallery and could be considered a complete immersion (Fig. 33). Whereas prior installations were within a gallery space, meaning that audiences would experience the installation as if it was another room in the gallery, Zwirner participants were given the opportunity to experience the installation as if it were its own separate space, away from the gallery. Previous Obliteration Rooms<\/em> that existed as a single room inside the museum meant that audiences would walk into and out of them through another section in the gallery. Although they allowed audiences to feel as if they were leaving the gallery, this illusion was then broken when the participant walked into the next room. However, since the Zwirner Gallery Obliteration Room <\/em>was its own separate house, audiences could experience the artwork without ever feeling as if they were still in an art museum.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 37. Before. Inside of The Obliteration Room,
Yayoi Kusama, David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015.
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Figure 38. After. Inside of The Obliteration Room,
Yayoi Kusama, David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea, NY, 2015.
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPart 2:
Later Obliteration Rooms<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKusama, Her Brand,
and
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[1]<\/span>\u00a0For another example of The Obliteration Room<\/em> outside of the Unites States, see the room installed in the Museum MACAN – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Indonesia for the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow<\/em>that lasted from May 12 – September 9, 2018, and the YouTube video of the installation: https:\/\/youtu.be\/LkjUFGzYm9c<\/a>; Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow<\/em>, Edited by Russell Storer, 1st ed. National Gallery Singapore, 2023, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2307\/jj.3385988.<\/p>

[2]<\/span>\u00a0Gray, \u201cYayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room | TateShots,\u201d [0:44]. The limited interactivity in the 2018 installation is demonstrated in a time-lapse video, which does not show anyone sitting on the chairs or furniture or otherwise physically manipulating the space.High Museum of Art, \u201c[3 Month] Timelapse of Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room at The High Museum of Art,\u201d posted February 25, 2019, 1:16.<\/p>

[3]<\/span>\u00a0Tunny, email message, August 22, 2023.<\/p>

[4] <\/span>Lillian Gray, \u201cYayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room | TateShots,\u201d (Tate Modern, 2012), YouTube. (0:44); TateShots is the name given to the videography department at the Tate Modern in London.<\/p>

[5]<\/span> Anna Piper, \u201c’The joy of this exhibit is how much it invites play’: the Obliteration Room at the Tate Modern.\u201d<\/p>

[6]<\/span>\u00a0Vatsala Sethi, \u201cYayoi Kusama’s famed ‘The Obliteration Room’ comes back to Tate Modern.\u201d<\/p>

[7]<\/span>\u00a0Nick Wichmann, \u201cKusama’s Obliteration Room Comes to Tate Modern for UNIQLO Tate Play \u2013 Press Release.\u201d (Tate Modern, 2021).<\/p>

[8]<\/span>\u00a0The UNIQLO branding may have also led to a difference in rules communicated to the participants, but it is unclear.<\/p>

[9]<\/span>\u00a0Julia Halperin and Sarah Cascone, \u201cAnatomy of a Blockbuster: How the Hirshhorn Museum Hit the Jackpot with Its Yayoi Kusama Show,\u201d (Artnet News, 2017).<\/p>

[10] <\/span>The sticker sheet for the Hirshhorn installation included six different stickers of three different sizes, two reds and one of each orange, yellow, green, and blue (Fig. 14). In this exhibition, Kusama has chosen to stick to five of the colors in the rainbow, but has chosen two of the same red shade, rather than fully completing the rainbow with purple.<\/p>

[11] <\/span>Art Gallery of Ontario, \u201cYayoi Kusama\u2019s The Obliteration Room,\u201d YouTube, April 9, 2018.<\/p>

[12] <\/span>Adan Jerreat-Poole and Sarah Brophy, \u201cEncounters with Kusama: disability, feminism, and the mediated Mad art of #InfiniteKusama,\u201d Feminist Media<\/em> Studies<\/em> 21, no. 6 (2021): 911.<\/p>

[13] <\/span>I have been unable to find exact instructions for the reasoning behind the colors and am therefore assuming that they then are meant to be the colors of the rainbow.<\/p>

[14]<\/span>\u00a0Bishop specifically relays the idea of \u201cincomplete\u201d art to the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres\u2019 \u2018candy spills\u2019 in which the work is always incomplete as it relies on audiences and museums to both actively take apart and assemble the candy pieces that the work consists of; Bishop, Installation Art, <\/em>115.<\/p>

[15]<\/span>\u00a0\u201cIn some of the #InfiniteKusama selfies, we discovered evidence of rule-breakers who did place the stickers on their own bodies, mapping out the limits of this [the AGO\u2019s] control. The circulation of these acts of resistance online alongside the images of \u201cgood\u201d patrons who followed the rules and took exhibition approved photos shows us the critical potential of mediated affective encounters, their capacity to generate momentary disruptions\u2026\u201d \u2013Poole and Brophy, \u201cEncounters with Kusama,\u201d 911.<\/p>

[16]<\/span>\u00a0I have not found a full 360-degree view of the exterior of the house. It would be interesting to see if it has a backyard space or not, as to compare it to the indoor \u201coutside\u201d of The Obliteration Room<\/em> at the AGO. I am also curious as to how the rules were communicated to audience members. I am assuming that they were explicitly told not to place stickers on the outside, rather than the idea that stickers were, instead, removed from the exterior, after participation.<\/p>

[17]<\/span>\u00a0I have also yet to see what the meaning of \u201c9393\u201d is to Kusama.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms Changed and Unchanged Most recently, Kusama installed The Obliteration Room at QAGOMA in 2011-2012, the Tate Modern in 2012 (and again in 2022 with Uniqlo Tate Play), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2017, the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2018, the Museum of Modern and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":87,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-243","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/243\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":90,"date":"2024-03-01T01:42:17","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T01:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=90"},"modified":"2024-12-02T22:12:35","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T22:12:35","slug":"biblio","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/biblio\/","title":{"rendered":"Bibliography"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room: Community Building in Action<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u201cAbout<\/strong><\/span> \u2013 Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.\u201d n.d. Queensland Art Gallery. Accessed July 4, 2023. https:\/\/www.qagoma.qld.gov.au\/about\/<\/a>.<\/p>

Art Gallery of Ontario<\/strong><\/span>. \u201cYayoi Kusama\u2019s The Obliteration Room.\u201d YouTube, April 9, 2018. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LegJq5tNLyg<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>

Bishop<\/span><\/strong>, Claire.\u00a0Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship.<\/em>\u00a0London: Verso, 2012. https:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/2027\/heb32115.0001.001<\/a>. PDF.<\/p>

Bishop<\/span><\/strong>, Claire. \u201cAntagonism and Relational Aesthetics,\u201d October 110 (Autumn 2004): 51-79.<\/p>

Bishop<\/span><\/strong>, Claire. Installation Art: A Critical History.<\/em> New York: Routledge, 2005.<\/p>

Beck<\/span><\/strong>, Mirja. “A Lived Experience\u2014Immersive Multi-Sensorial Art Exhibitions as a New Kind of (Not that) \u2018Cheap Images\u2019.” Arts 12, no. 1 (2023): 16.<\/p>

Beer<\/span><\/strong>, Ruth, Kit Grauer, and Patricia Huijnen. \u201cCatch + Release: Experiential Learning through Contemporary Art in a Heritage Museum Context.\u201d The international journal of the inclusive museum<\/em> 5, no. 3 (2013): 27\u201336.<\/p>

Bourriaud<\/span><\/strong>, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics<\/em>. N.p.: Les Presses du r\u00e9el, 2002.<\/p>

Clintberg<\/span><\/strong>, Mark. “Commodified Generosity and Relational Abductions: The Multiples of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.” Order No. MR45282, Concordia University (Canada), 2008. https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/dissertations-theses\/commodified-generosity-relational-abductions\/docview\/304489785\/se-2.<\/a><\/p>

Duncan<\/span><\/strong>, Carol. \u201cThe Art Museum as Ritual.\u201d\u00a0The Art bulletin (New York, N.Y.)<\/em>\u00a077, no. 1 (1995): 10-13.<\/p>

Eco<\/span><\/strong>, Umberto. The Open Work<\/em> (1962).<\/em> Trans. Anna Cancogni. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.<\/p>

Fifield<\/span><\/strong>, Anna. “How Yayoi Kusama Channels Mental Illness through Art.” Telegraph-Journal,<\/em> Feb 22, 2017. https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/newspapers\/how-yayoi-kusama-channels-mental-illness-through\/docview\/1870495381\/se-2<\/a>.<\/p>

Foster<\/span><\/strong>, Gwendolyn Audrey. \u201cSelf-Stylization and Performativity in the Work of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama and Mariko Mori.\u201d Quarterly Review of Film and Video<\/em> 27, no. 4 (2010): 267-275.<\/p>

Gray<\/span><\/strong>, Lillian. \u201cYayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room | TateShots,\u201d Tate Modern, 2012, YouTube. https:\/\/youtu.be\/-xNzr-fJHQw<\/a>.<\/p>

Halperin<\/span><\/strong>, Julia, and Sarah Cascone. \u201cAnatomy of a Blockbuster: How the Hirshhorn Museum Hit the Jackpot with Its Yayoi Kusama Show.\u201d Artnet News 2017. https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/art-world\/yayoi-kusama-hirshhorn-museum-959951<\/a>.<\/p>

Hermann<\/span><\/strong>, Molly, dir. Seriously Amazing Objects<\/em>. Season 2, episode 3, \u201cSupersize.\u201d The Biscuit Factory. Aired February 3, 2020, on Paramount Plus. https:\/\/www.paramountplus.com\/shows\/seriously-amazing-objects\/<\/a>.<\/p>

Horowitz<\/span><\/strong>, Noah. Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.<\/p>

Jerreat-Poole<\/span><\/strong>, Adan and Sarah Brophy. \u201cEncounters with Kusama: disability, feminism, and the mediated Mad art of #InfiniteKusama.\u201d Feminist Media Studies<\/em> 21, no. 6 (2021): 905-922. https:\/\/doi\/org\/10.1080\/14680777.2020.1770313.<\/p>

Jones<\/span><\/strong>, Amelia. Body Art\/Performing the Subject.<\/em> Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.<\/p>

Kennicott<\/span><\/strong>, Philip. \u201cI went to Kusama and all I got was this lousy selfie.\u201d The Washington Post, 2017. https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/museums\/i-went-to-kusama-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-selfie\/2017\/04\/14\/c8fd6c30-2138-11e7-ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html<\/a>.<\/p>

\u201cKids & Families<\/span><\/strong> \u2013 Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.\u201d n.d. Queensland Art Gallery. Accessed July 4, 2023. https:\/\/www.qagoma.qld.gov.au\/kids-and-families\/<\/a>.<\/p>

Kraynak<\/span><\/strong>, Janet. \u201cTherapeutic Participation and the Museological User: The Museum in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism.\u201d In Contemporary Art and the Digitization of Everyday Life, 115-150. University of California Press, 2020.<\/p>

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Kusama<\/span><\/strong>, Yayoi. Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama<\/em>. Trans. Ralph McCarthy. English ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011. Print.<\/p>

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Kusama<\/span><\/strong>, Yayoi, Frances Morris, and Jo Applin. Yayoi Kusama \/ Edited by Frances Morris; with Contributions by Jo Applin … [et Al.]<\/em>. London: Tate Publishing, 2012.<\/p>

Kusama<\/span><\/strong>, Yayoi, and Stephanie Rosenthal. Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective \/ Edited by Stephanie Rosenthal.<\/em> Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2021.<\/p>

Kusama<\/span><\/strong>, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow<\/em>. Edited by Russell Storer. 1st ed. National Gallery Singapore, 2023. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2307\/jj.3385988.<\/p>

Laurberg<\/span><\/strong>, Marie. \u201cAmid Infinity: Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Immersive Installations.\u201d In Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective \/ Edited by Stephanie Rosenthal, <\/em>282-291. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2021.<\/p>

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Lee<\/span><\/strong>, SooJin. \u201cThe Art and Politics of Artists\u2019 Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama.\u201d Persona Studies<\/em> 1, no. 1 (April 30, 2015). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.21153\/ps2015vol1no1art422<\/a>.<\/p>

Lenz<\/span><\/strong>, Heather, dir. Kusama – Infinity<\/em>. Featuring Yayoi Kusama. 2018, Magnolia Pictures, on Amazon Prime.<\/p>

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Ortiz<\/span><\/strong>, Jen. \u201cCan Performance Art be Collected\u2026and Still Maintain its Original Message\u2026?\u201d Hyperallergic, 2012. https:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/53624\/can-performance-art-be-collected\/<\/a>.<\/p>

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Raps<\/span><\/strong>, Natalie Jackie. “The Relationship between Art, Consumerism, and Desire: Are Contemporary Artistic Collaborations with Luxury Brands the Ultimate Commodity?” Sotheby’s Institute of Art – New York, 2014. https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/dissertations-theses\/relationship-between-art-consumerism-desire-are\/docview\/1526336021\/se-2<\/a>.<\/p>

Rea<\/span><\/strong>, Naomi. \u201cAs Museums Fall in Love with \u2018experiences,\u2019 Their Core Missions Face Redefinition.\u201d Artnet News, March 15, 2019. https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/art-world\/experience-economy-museums-1486807<\/a>.<\/p>

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Schneider<\/span><\/strong>, Tim. \u201cWhy the Pandemic Will Actually Strengthen the Art Experience Economy\u2014and the Old-Fashioned Gallery Business, too.\u201d Artnet News, April 12, 2021. https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/market\/arts-experience-economy-intel-2021-1957622<\/a>.<\/p>

Shibutami<\/span><\/strong>, Akira, and Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama: All About My Love \/ [chapter Texts by Akira Shibutami]<\/em>. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2020.<\/p>

Silbert<\/span><\/strong>, Jake. \u201cLouis Vuitton X Yayoi Kusama Is Peak Luxury Collab. Is That a Good Thing?\u201d Highsnobiety, January 19, 2023. https:\/\/www.highsnobiety.com\/p\/louis-vuitton-yayoi-kusama-review\/<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>

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Sokolowsky<\/span><\/strong>, Jennifer. \u201cArt in the Instagram Age: How Social Media Is Shaping Art and How You Experience It.\u201d 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\/<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>

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Tatehata<\/span><\/strong>, Akira. Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love. <\/em>New York: David Zwirner Books, 2016.<\/p>

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Wiener<\/span><\/strong>, Anna. \u201cThe Rise of \u201cImmersive\u201d Art.\u201d The New Yorker. Last modified 2022. https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/letter-from-silicon-valley\/the-rise-and-rise-of-immersive-art<\/a>.<\/p>

Winnicott<\/span><\/strong>, Donald W.,\u00a0‘Why Children Play’,\u00a0in Lesley Caldwell, and Helen Taylor Robinson (eds),\u00a0The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott: Volume 2, 1939-1945<\/em>\u00a0(New York,\u00a02016;\u00a0online edn,\u00a0Oxford Academic, 1 Dec. 2016),\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/med:psych\/9780190271343.003.0024<\/a>.<\/p>

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Whitmyer<\/span><\/strong>, Adele. “An Analysis of Immersive Art Experiences.” Sotheby’s Institute of Art: New York, 2022. https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/dissertations-theses\/analysis-immersive-art-experiences\/docview\/2627569065\/se-2<\/a>.<\/p>

Yamamura<\/strong><\/span>, Midori. Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular.<\/em> Cambridge, Massachusetts: The
MIT Press, 2015.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room: Community Building in Action Bibliography \u201cAbout \u2013 Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.\u201d n.d. Queensland Art Gallery. Accessed July 4, 2023. https:\/\/www.qagoma.qld.gov.au\/about\/. Art Gallery of Ontario. \u201cYayoi Kusama\u2019s The Obliteration Room.\u201d YouTube, April 9, 2018. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LegJq5tNLyg.\u00a0 Bishop, Claire.\u00a0Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship.\u00a0London: Verso, 2012. https:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/2027\/heb32115.0001.001. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-90","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":87,"date":"2024-03-01T01:15:33","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T01:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=87"},"modified":"2024-12-02T22:11:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T22:11:44","slug":"part-2-later-iterations-of-the-obliteration-rooms","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/part-2-later-iterations-of-the-obliteration-rooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Part 2: Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Obliteration Room<\/em> has since changed distinctly from Kusama\u2019s first drawing proposal of the space (Fig. 4) and the original 2002 installation (Fig. 1). Not only has larger furniture been used to accommodate adult-sized bodies, but now, the single room space has become a full-fledged kitchen, living, or family room space that occasionally spreads two to three rooms. The new rooms have been expanded, evolving beyond the room within a room set-up wherein the walls were approximately 4 to 5 feet tall, and the rest of the gallery space could still be seen from inside the installation.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 19. Yayoi Kusama, The Obliteration Room, 2015, David Zwirner Gallery.
Credit to David Zwirner Gallery.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Now, every Obliteration Room <\/em>is its own all-encompassing space. New and more d\u00e9cor has been added, making each space feel like an actual home rather than a nod towards one. The increased similarity to an actual home makes the space more immersive for adult participants. Kusama first creates a space that would be in every well-off Australian household, with items that would be familiar to the Australian viewer. She then defamiliarizes the space, turning it into a sterile environment by painting the objects and walls white and therefore, forcing her audience to experience alienation within a previously comfortable space.<\/p>

Comparing the newer versions of The Obliteration Room <\/em>to the 2002 version allows us to see distinct changes between the original version meant for children and the later versions meant for all. The rooms have advanced from simple spaces with few furniture items to full-fledged replicants of the Western home. Each installation modified the original QAGOMA rules to different degrees. The changes to the scale of the furniture and of the installation, the ages of participants, and the design of The Obliteration Room<\/em> will be examined and analyzed in this section. The differences show which decisions are up to the hosting museum and which are ingrained, unchangeable aspects of the artwork, as will be analyzed later since hosting museums in different countries include different design elements.[1]<\/a> They also allow for each new set of participants to interact differently within the spaces, creating a different sense of community according to different rules.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 20. Yayoi Kusama, (Before) installation view of The Obliteration Room, 2018. Art Gallery of Ontario Furniture, white paint, dot stickers. Dimensions variable. The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia Collection of Queensland Art Gallery \u00a9 Yayoi Kusama. Photos by AGO Image Resources<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Figure 21. Yayoi Kusama, (After) installation view of The Obliteration Room, 2018. Art Gallery of Ontario Furniture, white paint, dot stickers Dimensions variable The Obliteration Room (2002 to present) first commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery, Australia Collection of Queensland Art Gallery \u00a9 Yayoi Kusama Photos by AGO Image Resources<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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[1]<\/a> In an email with Jacqueline Tunny, she made it clear to me that hosting museums were responsible for choosing, installing, and painting their own furniture for The Obliteration Room<\/em>. This means that different versions of The Obliteration Room <\/em>will have different furniture that attempts to achieve similar Australian style domestic living room and kitchen spaces.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 2: Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms The Obliteration Room has since changed distinctly from Kusama\u2019s first drawing proposal of the space (Fig. 4) and the original 2002 installation (Fig. 1). Not only has larger furniture been used to accommodate adult-sized bodies, but now, the single room space has become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-87","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":74,"date":"2024-02-20T18:40:26","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T18:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/?page_id=74"},"modified":"2024-12-04T00:56:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T00:56:38","slug":"kusama-her-brand-and-the-experience-economy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/part-2-later-iterations-of-the-obliteration-rooms\/kusama-her-brand-and-the-experience-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Kusama, Her Brand, and The Experience Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Kusama, Her Brand, and The Experience Economy<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In an age where physical art was prioritized, Kusama\u2019s early interactive art allowed a break from the traditional gallery space. [1]\u00a0<\/span>However, sixty years later, her works have experienced re-contextualization due to the internet, social media, and a shift towards the experience economy. Kusama\u2019s 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]<\/span>\u00a0The aspect of creating and sharing content around art continues to be a large part of the draw of Kusama\u2019s 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 \u201cinstagrammable\u201d works have created and is mostly likely playing into or encouraging it.<\/p>

Kusama\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s branding is based not only on her patterns but also on her openness about her personal life and mental health struggles.[3]<\/span><\/p>

Frances Morris, curator at the Tate Modern, argues that Kusama\u2019s recognizable dot patterns have allowed her to become a globally branded artist.[4]<\/span> 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]\u00a0<\/span>Exhibitions of her works draw hundreds of thousands of viewers and have perpetual online waitlists to experience her mirror rooms, with The Obliteration Room<\/em> itself touring to eighteen countries and displayed at thirty-one venues with a total attendance of over 6,242,000 people.[6]<\/span> 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.<\/p>

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Figure 11. Yayoi Kusama in her Narcissus Garden installation, 1966, Venice Biennale. Credit to Formidable Mag. https:\/\/www.formidablemag.com\/yayoi-kusama\/.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Figure 15. Narcissus Garden, 1966\/2002. Yayoi Kusama, Site-specific work.
Watermall: 1200 x 2400 x 30cm. Mirror Balls: approx. 2000, 18cm diameter each.
Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, 2002, Queensland Art Gallery.
Gifted to the Queensland Art Gallery by the Artist.
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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 \u201ccommercial value of her Japanese body and identity at a time when escalating Cold War national pride and xenophobia jeopardized her career in New York.\u201d[7]<\/span> 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\u2019s 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 \u201cmentally ill artist\u201d stereotype.[8]<\/span> 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 \u201cotherness,\u201d 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]\u00a0<\/span> 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]<\/span><\/p>

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<\/em>. An eBay listing for a sticker sheet from the Zwirner Gallery\u2019s iteration of The Obliteration Room <\/em>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<\/em>? 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 \u2013 April 19, 2015, is not, by itself, Kusama\u2019s art.[11]<\/span> The sticker sheets, divorced from their context, serve no good as Kusama\u2019s artworks, as they are only a small portion of the entire work.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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<\/em> outside the prestigious international art exhibition\u2019s Italian Pavilion. The work was recreated by Kusama in 2002 alongside Obliteration Room<\/em> for the APT at the QAGOMA.[12]\u00a0<\/span>Her original Narcissus Garden<\/em> consisted of 1,500 factory-made mirror balls alongside a sign that read \u201cYour Narcissism for Sale\u201d wherein passers-by were invited to purchase the mirror balls for 1,500 lira (about $2 each).[13]\u00a0<\/span>Kusama stood amongst the mirror balls, marketing herself as part of the art piece (Fig. 14). \u00a0Kusama 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\u2019s sense of art and the self.[14]<\/span> 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\u2019s sense of art and the self.[15]\u00a0<\/span>Notably, her sign asked audiences to buy their narcissism, not her art, reflecting the artist\u2019s intention to parody the collection of art and refute discussions of her as narcissist.[16]<\/span> \u00a0In that case, Kusama\u2019s ready-made artwork was both performance and commodity. One could argue that her Obliteration Room <\/em>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. <\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 30. Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (Kitchen Detail), 2015. David Zwirner Gallery, Chelsea.
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Kusama\u2019s art experienced a resurgence in the 1990s-2000s, coinciding with the rise of the \u201cexperience economy\u201d and changing capitalist system. Author Joseph Pine defines the \u201cexperience economy\u201d as an economic shift wherein the customer values experiences that engage them in a personal way over goods and services.[17]\u00a0<\/span>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\u20141990s 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]<\/span><\/a> Kusama\u2019s Obliteration Room<\/em> 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\u2019s 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]<\/span><\/p>

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]<\/span> Visitors want to experience artwork because it has Kusama\u2019s 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 na\u00efve to Kusama\u2019s 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] <\/span>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]<\/span><\/p>

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 \u201cexperiences\u201d and to use these \u201cexperiences\u201d 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]<\/span> 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.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 40. Yayoi Kusama for the Yayoi Kusama x Louis Vuitton Ad Campaign: Infinity and Beyond, 2023.
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[1]\u00a0<\/span>Naomi Rea, \u201cAs Museums Fall in Love with \u2018experiences,\u2019 Their Core Missions Face Redefinition,\u201d (Artnet News, March 15, 2019).<\/p>

[2]\u00a0<\/span>Jennifer Sokolowsky, \u201cArt in the Instagram Age: How Social Media Is Shaping Art and How You Experience It,\u201d 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\/.\u00a0<\/p>

[3]<\/span>\u00a0Chung, \u201cNarcissus Garden: How Yayoi Kusama Has Become a Global Cultural,\u201d 270-275.<\/p>

[4]\u00a0<\/span>Gray, \u201cYayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room | TateShots,\u201d (3:22).<\/p>

[5]\u00a0<\/span>While the differences between her Infinity Rooms<\/em> and Obliteration Rooms <\/em>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>

[6]\u00a0<\/span>Tunny, email message, August 22, 2023.<\/p>

[7]\u00a0<\/span>Lee, \u201cThe Art and Politics of Artists\u2019 Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama,\u201d 25.<\/p>

[8]\u00a0<\/span>Yayoi Kusama, Frances Morris, and Jo Applin, Yayoi Kusama<\/em>, 287; Lee, \u201cThe Art and Politics of Artists\u2019 Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama,\u201d 29.<\/p>

[9]\u00a0<\/span>Jones, Body Art\/Performing the Subject, <\/em>6-7.<\/p>

[10]\u00a0<\/span>Lee, \u201cThe Art and Politics of Artists\u2019 Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama,\u201d 34.<\/p>

[11]<\/span>\u00a0Tunny, email message, August 22, 2023.<\/p>

[12]<\/span>\u00a0Kusama, Infinity Net<\/em>, 54; Kusama considers the sale of the balls as an \u201caudience-participation\u201d 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\u2019s relationship to art and commerce in a later section.<\/p>

[13]\u00a0<\/span>Lee, \u201cThe Art and Politics of Artists\u2019 Personas,\u201d 35; Kusama, Infinity Net<\/em>, 54.<\/p>

[14]\u00a0<\/span>Yamamura, Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular, <\/em>126.<\/p>

[15]<\/span>\u00a0Yamamura, Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular, <\/em>126.<\/p>

[16]\u00a0<\/span>Lee, \u201cThe Art and Politics of Artists\u2019 Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama.\u201d 35.<\/p>

[17]<\/span>\u00a0Joseph B. Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy<\/em>, 12.<\/p>

[18]\u00a0<\/span>Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics,<\/em> 116; \u201c…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.\u201d \u2014Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics,<\/em> 26.<\/p>

[19]\u00a0<\/span>O\u2019Doherty, Inside the White Cube,<\/em> 52.<\/p>

[20]<\/span>\u00a0Bishop, Artificial Hells<\/em>, 2<\/p>

[21]\u00a0<\/span>\u201cProducts by Louis Vuitton: Yayoi Kusama X Louis Vuitton: Creating Infinity.\u201d Louis Vuitton. Accessed October 23, 2024. https:\/\/eu.louisvuitton.com\/eng-e1\/products\/yayoi-kusama-x-louis-vuitton-creating-infinity-nvprod4800001v\/R09253; Silbert, Jake. \u201cLouis Vuitton X Yayoi Kusama Is Peak Luxury Collab. Is That a Good Thing?\u201d Highsnobiety, January 19, 2023. https:\/\/www.highsnobiety.com\/p\/louis-vuitton-yayoi-kusama-review\/.\u00a0<\/p>

[22]\u00a0<\/span>For example, #infinitekusama, #obliterationroom, and the tagged location of \u201cThe Obliteration Room\u201d 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\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>

[23]<\/span>\u00a0Julia Halperin and Sarah Cascone, \u201cAnatomy of a Blockbuster: How the Hirshhorn Museum Hit the Jackpot with Its Yayoi Kusama Show;\u201d Philip Kennicott, \u201cI went to Kusama and all I got was this lousy selfie,\u201d (The Washington Post, 2017).<\/p>

[24]<\/span> \u201cProducts<\/span> by Louis Vuitton: Yayoi Kusama X Louis Vuitton: Creating Infinity.\u201d Louis Vuitton. Accessed October 23, 2024. https:\/\/eu.louisvuitton.com\/eng-e1\/products\/yayoi-kusama-x-louis-vuitton-creating-infinity-nvprod4800001v\/R09253<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 2: Later Iterations of the Obliteration Rooms Kusama, Her Brand, and The Experience Economy In an age where physical art was prioritized, Kusama\u2019s early interactive art allowed a break from the traditional gallery space. [1]\u00a0However, sixty years later, her works have experienced re-contextualization due to the internet, social media, and a shift towards the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":87,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"elementor_header_footer","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-74","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/74\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/KusamasObliterationRoom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]