Photo by Andrew Toth/Getty Images
Yayoi Kusama has recently addressed her racist descriptions of black people in several written works, including her 2003 autobiography Infinity Net, shortly before the opening of her latest exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMOMA).
“I deeply regret having used hurtful and offensive language in my book,” the Japanese artist said in an exclusive statement to the San Francisco Chronicle provided by the museum on Friday. “My message has always been one of love, hope, compassion and respect for all people. My lifelong goal has been to empower humanity through my art. I apologize for the pain I have caused.”
Related Articles
The museum’s decision to display Kusama was criticized earlier this week by Chronicle columnist Soleil Ho. In an email statement to Ho, museum director Christopher Bedford said, “SFMOMA stands firmly against this and all anti-black sentiment.”
Bedford also told the Chronicle in a telephone interview, “We can use this moment as a catalyst for a broader interrogation of what it means to present artists in our galleries.”
“I think it’s a tremendous leadership opportunity for SFMOMA,” Bedford told the Chronicle, pointing to a series of public programs planned for early next year that will explore the work of artists with “problematic histories.”
“In many ways, the statement that Kusama himself made opened the door for us to become leaders in this field and to think about the relationship between authorial complexity and artistic expression,” he said.
Bedford said the programs are led by Gamynne Guillotte, SFMOMA’s director of education and community engagement, and planning for them has been underway since she joined the institution in June.
Journalist Dexter Thomas, who is fluent in Japanese and spent a year abroad at Waseda University as a Fulbright scholar, highlighted the derogatory language Kusama used in articles for Vice in 2017 and for Hyperallergic earlier this year. Thomas also interviewed the artist before the opening of her eponymous museum in Tokyo.
In the original 2003 Japanese edition of Infinity Net, Kusama describes black people using derogatory language in several instances. This includes marveling at her “distinctive smell” and “animalistic sexual techniques”; a memoir of the artist’s use of a naked black man in her own performance art, with details of his lips and genitals; She also complains that a neighborhood in New York’s Greenwich Village where she used to live has become a “slum” with falling real estate prices because “blacks are shooting each other outside the door.” This last line was deleted from Infinity Net’s English translation.
Thomas noted that Kusama’s 1984 short story The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street also contained “grotesque and voyeuristic depictions” about the smell and genitals of its black characters, a treatment not applied to the narrative’s white counterparts. In the 1971 play “Tokyo Lee,” the Japanese artist also describes his lone black character as a “WILD-looking, hairy, coal-black savage.”
In addition to her novellas and autobiography, Kusama’s artistic works also include paintings, installations, sculptures, performance art, films and poems. The 94-year-old contemporary artist is best known internationally for her popular, selfie-inducing, mirror-lined “Infinity Rooms” and use of polka dots.
This year has been particularly busy for the “Kusama Industrial Complex,” as ARTnews contributor Greg Allen dubbed it in 2020. In January, the artist’s second collaboration with Louis Vuitton included a high-profile campaign and several stores decorated with nods to her work. including polka dots, Narcissus Garden-style chromatic spheres and animatronic robots modeled after her. In March, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery extended its exhibition of Kusama’s work for the second time through July 16. In April, Sotheby’s sold her art for $23 million in a single auction in Hong Kong, and the city’s M+ Museum gave away 10,000 tickets to its blockbuster retrospective. In May, David Zwirner opened a large solo exhibition of her work in his three rooms in New York and immediately drew long lines. In July, a permanent gallery of Kusama’s work opened at the Instituto Inhotim, a sculpture park and museum in Brumadinho, Brazil.
Kusama has lived at Seiwa Hospital for the Insane in Tokyo since 1977 because the facility has a supportive art therapy program. She also wrote in Infinity Net about her long-standing mental health struggles. “I battle pain, fear, and anxiety every day, and the only method that I believe alleviates my illness is to continue creating art,” Kusama wrote.
“Infinite Love,” Kusama’s first solo exhibition in Northern California, is scheduled to open October 14 at SFMOMA. According to the Chronicle, the exhibition is already sold out through November.
SF MOMA and Thomas did not respond to ARTnews’ requests for comment.