Yayoi Kusama’s complicated legacy with anti-Blackness
TheGrio...
As Yayoi Kusama’s legacy returns to the forefront, so are the ways in which it has become complicated through anti-Blackness.
Yayoi Kusama, the celebrated Japanese contemporary artist who turned vibrant psychedelic polka dots and seemingly endless mirrors into some of the world’s most groundbreaking art, died earlier this month at the age of 97.
Kusama died on Aug. 14 in Tokyo, according to the Yayoi Kusama Studio, AP News reported. A cause of death has not been made public. She had been living voluntarily in a psychiatric institution since 1977.
“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” the studio’s statement said. “We will carry forward Kusama’s wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world.”
Over a career spanning more than seven decades, Kusama became one of Japan’s most famous contemporary artists and one of the most recognizable women in modern art, with her signature polka dots and Infinity Mirror Rooms turning her into a global cultural phenomenon. As her legacy returns to the forefront in the wake of her death, the ways it’s become complicated are resurfacing as well. After a history of anti-Black statements, many in the art world and beyond have had to reckon with the complete picture of who Kusama may have been.
“Black folks, before everybody gets swept up in the Yayoi Kusama tributes today, I need us to remember who this woman was when she wrote about US. Because yes, the polka dots are cute. The infinity rooms are iconic. She was also deeply racist toward Black people,” Jonah Sahn, Artistic Director of The NYC Otaku Choir, wrote on Threads.
In 2017, journalist Dexter Thomas called attention to Kusama’s history of anti-Black writings after she abruptly canceled an interview with him, claiming that, based on some preliminary “low-quality” questions, he didn’t understand her art. Writing about the experience for Vice News, Thomas detailed several racist passages he found in the contemporary artist’s 2002 autobiography, “Infinity Net.”
In the book, Kusama describes Black people in exoticizing and primitive terms, writing about their smell and sexual behavior. She also recalls using a naked Black man in her performance art, describing his lips and genitals in fetishizing detail. Elsewhere, she bemoans that the area of Greenwich Village where she once lived had turned into a “slum,” with real estate prices falling because “Black people are shooting each other out front” — a sentence that was removed from the English translation. The stereotypes and anti-Black themes also appear in some of her fiction, including “The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street,” which features a young Black male sex worker portrayed as an impulsive drug addict.
“Overall, it’s a pattern that reflects an uncritical and unimaginative acceptance of mainstream American racism, and also leaves me wondering if my own blackness might have played some small role in Kusama’s assumption that I did not understand her art and was thus unfit to interview her,” Thomas wrote at the time.
The artist later apologized in 2023 for the offensive writings after backlash mounted ahead of an exhibition of her work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, according to The Washington Post.
“I deeply regret using hurtful and offensive language in my book,” she said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “My message has always been one of love, hope, compassion, and respect for all people. My lifelong intention has been to lift up humanity through my art. I apologize for the pain I have caused.”
Why the art world has seemingly looked the other way when it comes to Kusama remains a mystery. Her work has been exhibited all over the world, including at the Whitney, MoMA, and the Hirshhorn. For some, though, her well-documented struggles with mental illness — including hallucinations she experienced from childhood and later channeled into her art — have become inseparable from how her life and work are understood, if not necessarily an excuse for the harm in her words.
Some Black fans of the artist have been reckoning with this legacy since her death was announced.
“I studied Kusama in college, I later was on the marketing team for a doc about her work at PBS, I was a big fan,” a user on Threads began in a post. “I was sad to see she died. Then, I read the NYT article in its entirety, just 2 short sentences about her racist remarks. After digging deeper, her comments were so much worse than portrayed. Profoundly disturbing for a ‘great mind’ – I will no longer celebrate her legacy. Disappointing that these institutions (universities, public media etc) glazed over this pivotal personal failing.”
Another on the same platform added, “Yayoi Kusama’s history of anti-Black rhetoric means Black people owe her no grief or mourning upon her passing, regardless of any later apologies.”
For Black audiences, this kind of reckoning with pop culture is hardly unfamiliar. We have been asked to forgive and forget a lot by many celebrated figures, even as their work has shaped the culture around us. Kusama’s death, arriving around the same time as two other famous luminaries — including one whose life offered a very different example of allyship — has also offered a reminder of what genuine solidarity can look like.
Then again, a major theme throughout Kusama’s work has been spreading joy, love, and hope through art. Perhaps broadening our understanding of the ways Black people have been denigrated in art and culture, even when it complicates the legacies of artists we admire, can be part of achieving that, too.