Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist known for pumpkins, polka dots and Infinity Mirror Rooms, has passed away aged 97, leaving behind an influence on contemporary art.

Yayoi Kusama, one of Japan’s most recognisable artists, has passed away aged 97. Kusama passed away in a Tokyo hospital on 14 August 2026, with the news announced by her studio on 27 August. She continued making art until the final days of her life.

For more than seven decades, Kusama built a world of dots, pumpkins, mirrors, flowers and repeated forms. Her work could be instantly recognised from across a room, yet behind its bright colours and playful forms was an artistic language shaped by her own experiences. From paintings and sculptures to installations, performances, fiction and poetry, Kusama spent her life returning to ideas of infinity, repetition and what she called self obliteration.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama began drawing as a child after experiencing visions and hallucinations. These experiences became part of the way she saw the world and later informed the dots and repeated patterns that became central to her work. In 1957, she moved to the United States and settled in New York, where she developed her Infinity Net paintings, soft sculptures and early mirror installations.

Her career was not always met with the attention she receives today. Kusama worked in New York during the 1960s, when Pop Art and Minimalism were taking shape, but spent periods away from the centre of the art world. She eventually returned to Japan in 1973 and later chose to live in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, working from a nearby studio. Her practice continued to grow, with painting, writing, sculpture and large scale installations becoming parts of an artistic career that would eventually reach audiences around the world.

Her pumpkins became among her most familiar works. The motif first appeared in her childhood memories and later became a recurring subject, appearing in sculptures and installations in different colours, materials and sizes. Her Infinity Mirror Rooms also brought her work to a much wider audience, allowing visitors to step inside spaces where lights, mirrors and repeated forms create the feeling of endless space.

Kusama in Thailand

Thailand has had its own encounters with Kusama’s work. During the first Bangkok Art Biennale in 2018, her 14 Pumpkins filled the atrium at CentralWorld with 14 inflatable pumpkins covered in her familiar patterns. At Siam Paragon, visitors could also see I Carry On Living with the Pumpkins, including red and silver pumpkin sculptures.

The works offered Bangkok a chance to experience Kusama’s art outside the traditional gallery setting. Her pumpkins appeared among shoppers, escalators and city crowds, turning familiar public spaces into part of the experience.

Kusama returned to Bangkok in a different form in 2023, when Louis Vuitton brought Dancing Pumpkin to Parc Paragon. The installation featured a large polka dotted pumpkin surrounded by smaller pumpkins, continuing the artist’s long relationship with the form.

An Influence Beyond the Art World

Kusama’s influence now reaches far beyond the art world. Her dots have become part of popular culture, while her mirrored rooms have introduced millions of people to contemporary art. Yet her work remains more than its recognisable visual style. Repetition, infinity and the disappearance of the individual run through much of her practice, ideas she developed over decades and continued to explore late into her life.

In February 2025, Koktail also looked at Kusama as part of Heartbreak, Loss and Triumph: 7 Female Artists Who Transformed Trauma into Iconic Art, exploring how difficult experiences shaped the work of seven influential female artists. You can read the full story here.

Yayoi Kusama leaves behind a body of work that is difficult to mistake for anyone else’s. Her pumpkins, dots and mirrored spaces will continue to appear around the world, but perhaps her greatest legacy is the idea that an artist can keep returning to the same questions for an entire lifetime and still find something new to say.

Her work will continue. And so will the dots.