I think about Yayoi Kusama almost every day and not necessarily because I want to. The first exhibit I went to was in 2017 at the NGV— it was called Flower Obsession—and since then something in me hasn’t stopped looping.

I think the chaos of her work is calming to me because it feels like my brain is meeting my external environment. The tension between the structure and the near-mania of detail is the part that feels most like me. It’s obsessive and I’m obsessive.

I don’t see what she sees but I know what it feels like to have to make, and to fill a void that refills itself. To live in a mind that presses against the edges of itself.

When I walked into the first room of the exhibit and saw the huge infinity net on the wall I felt really overcome with emotion. Seeing it in person felt like stepping into such a private ritual. Like watching a mind dissolve into process. The closer you get, the less sense it makes, and it only works when you stop trying to make sense of it. It’s not trying to impress—it just has to be done, and there’s no end in sight—just the act of continuing.

Sex Obsession was my favourite painting of the day.

Seeing it up close was so beautiful and full of life and every twist and spiral felt like it had grown that way on its own.

It gave me the feeling of being stuck but not in a way that felt still. Stuck but moving in any and every direction. Movement without progress.

The shapes felt like they were constantly shifting, but going nowhere. It was this push and pull of energy that looped in on itself, and even though it didn’t lead anywhere, it didn’t feel frustrating. It felt true. Like what it’s actually like to be inside your own head when you’re spiralling — not panicked, just endlessly circling something you can’t quite touch.

There was something comforting in that chaos. Familiar.

Kind of like being caught inside something endless and looping, where you're not getting anywhere, but you're never really static either.

A World Called Happiness was another panting that standing in front of felt surrendering to the chaos, like things don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.

The dots aren’t arranged in any clear pattern. They feel rushed, maybe even a bit desperate, like they had to get out of her as quickly as possible.

The idea that something so simple can make you feel so much is something I notice all the time—in coffee, in going for a walk, in sitting in stillness in a way that feels peaceful.

It’s almost like falling into an endless universe, but somehow it doesn’t scare me — it feels gentle.

The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe was my favourite room.

It felt like stepping into Sex Obsession—like the painting had broken open and spilled into the walls, the floor, the air.

The scale of it swallows your whole field of vision and there was a symbiotic feeling between seeing the painting and then being inside the room. Each one changed how I understood the other.

The painting gave the room meaning, and the room gave the painting scale —once I’d experienced both, I couldn’t separate them.

I could feel it in my body. The repetition, the rhythm, the total commitment to one idea—it made the room feel alive.

And being inside it felt like being fully surrounded by a mind that can’t stop, and doesn’t want to.

*The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe (2019)*

Revived Soul felt different. It didn’t pull me in the way the others did — it just moved. Quietly and constantly like rain tracing lines on a window, or steam drifting upwards without needing to be watched.

There’s no urgency in it, just a constant black and white flow that makes it feel stripped back, yet the contrast feels heavy. The dark areas don’t feel like shadows, they feel like voids — like parts of the painting just drop off into nothing.

It’s not chaotic or demanding. It’s soft but massive. Like it could keep going long past the canvas.

The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens is one I first saw back in 2019. I loved it then and I love it now.

The fact that only one person can experience it at a time makes it feel really personal — like stepping into someone else’s memory.

The pumpkins which scared Yayoi so much are isolated here and multiplied endlessly.

It felt like being surrounded by the exact thing you wish you weren’t, but learning to just stand in it.

Not to fix it or fight it, but to witness it.

To say: this is part of me too.

The more afraid you are, the more it expands — that’s how it felt. It’s beautiful and tragic and lovely and scary and quiet and loud all at once. It holds so much without needing to explain any of it.

*The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens (2015)*

In Love is Calling and My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light, the most beautiful thing to me wasn’t the colours, it was the way the light expanded and moved with the shapes in the room.

The colour was everywhere, but what I really noticed was how the light got shaped by everything else—by us, by the sculptures, by the way people moved through it. I kept wanting to see it in black and white.

Not because I didn’t like the colour, but because the beauty for me was in the light itself.

*My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light (2024)*

Dots Obsession made me feel small in the best way — like I was in a playground again.

The lightness of the balloons made the space feel like it was still moving — not frozen, but like a single moment suspended in time. Like the balloons were about to fall but never do. Like time was holding itself still just for a second, just long enough to notice it.

There was so much space, but it didn’t feel empty. It felt like there was air between everything, and that air carried something with it—movement, maybe, or joy, or just the sense that things didn’t have to rush to matter.

Self-Obliteration

Some damage is in the doing. Some is in the watching. I can’t tell which is worse.

How I’m feeling now