Yayoi Kusama
Metamorphosis
Palazzina dei Giardini, c.so Canalgrande, Modena
15th September 2006 – 7th January 2007

Lost within a dot and multiplied by walls of mirrors: this is how we see Yayoi Kusama, the most important living Japanese artist. It is a fact that in 1950s Tokyo, it was hard to be a young woman with a desire for originality and independence. Aided by a self-ironic narcissism yet devastated by an obsessive sensitivity; driven by the desire to stand on an even ground with her male counterparts and helped along by her multifaceted talents, Yayoi Kusama then left for the United States, where she lived from 1957 until 1973.
Once ensconced in the artistic ferment of New York, she took an active role in the happenings for peace in Vietnam as well as in the women’s rights movement. Despite the fact that she has produced films, edited magazines and participated in all kinds of experimental activities, her work remains widely recognisable for her use of dots, grids, mirrors and all that which adversely affects our perception, expressing her discomfort through works rooted partly in her playful outlook and partly in her sense of disorientation. Her poetics have always gone hand in hand with those of many other protagonists of our times: just think of her collaborations with the musician Peter Gabriel, with the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, or with the stylist Issey Miyake.
After the great recognition that she gained in the light of the exhibitions held in the most important museums around the world, she rose to fame in Italy in particular thanks to her participation at the Venice Biennials in 1966 and 1993, when she was chosen to represent her homeland: the rebellious little girl had won, albeit at the price of losing her own equilibrium.
Now the Galleria Civica of Modena has invited her to hold her first solo exhibition in an Italian museum. The opening ceremony will in fact take place on Saturday 16th September at 12pm at the Palazzina dei Giardini in corso Canalgrande in Modena of the Yayoi Kusama exhibition, organised and produced by the Galleria Civica of Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio of Modena, curated by Angela Vettese in collaboration with Milovan Farronato.
Like the solo exhibition dedicated to Ugo Rondinone, this show will be a part of festivalfilosofia. Dedicated this year to the theme of humanity, it will be held in Modena, Carpi and Sassuolo from Friday 15th until Sunday 17th September 2006 (www.festivalfilosofia.it).
There will be four environment installations at the Palazzina dei Giardini as well as paintings and object sculptures. Designed by the artist herself, the exhibition opens with an environment devoted to the sphere only to continue with two other darkened environments full of coloured dots of light: this is certainly one way of showing just how dazzling a simple domestic space can be, and therefore, just how estranged the things we consider nearest to us may become. All of a sudden, everything turns into an indecipherable, hostile enemy. The spectators will then walk through a room full of bio-morphous shapes forming an amusing labyrinth which then leads to the paintings in which the artist maniacally draws little circles or fills in boxes, shoes and other unlikely containers with unsettling little shapes, like micro-organisms besieging us, or like tiny excrescence growing out of control.
The key topics on which the exhibition is based, as are the entire works of the artist are therefore the love/hate relationship with control, but also manual work and creativity in general as an antidote to anxiety.

Yayoi Kusama will not say her age. She lives and works in Tokyo. For her biography, images and more detailed information, consult her site www.yayoi-kusama.jp

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