Being a pioneer in the minimalism and the feminist art movement, Yayoi Kusama is constantly pushing boundaries in the realm of culture and art. Every element in Kusama’s artwork, such as repetition, pattern and accumulation, questions the viewers to rethink social and political norms of society in the hopes that it would inspire change to gender equality. Her installation, Walking Piece, serves as an exemplary example of dissolving boundaries between humanity, art and environment. Dressed in a traditional pink kimono and holding an umbrella decorated with traditional Japanese flowers, Kusama wanders around the city of New York against a grey sea of houses. This performance, through the association of the kimono, vocalizes the stereotypes Asian
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Kusama, being a foreign artist living in New York, “is disabled due to a person-environment mismatch” (Goodley, 2011, pg. 16). Within the art community, there has been an intellectual resistance to admit paintings created by non-Westerners into the avant-garde movement. The art society in the 1960s expected to see artworks from a Japanese artist to be ethnic and traditional, typically embodying spiritual attributes. As Kusama’s artworks tend to employ bold colors and repetitive patterns, conservative art critics in the Western society often disregarded Kusama’s effort in progressing the avant-garde movement, but rather referred her artwork as a lost of cultural heritage and originality that tries to imitate Western art. Thus, Kusama’s artworks were viewed as a deviation from the art society. Even though critics have regarded her method of creating artworks as unconventional and believe it was abnormal for her not to treat her mental illness, Kusama believes that art making is both the symptom of and a cure to her obsession. Unlike “the psychiatric interpretation holds that witches themselves were insane” (Ehrenreich & English, 1973, pg. 9), Kusama, despite being diagnosed with mental illness and framed as abnormal, is not a freak that allows authority to eradicate her identity and contribution to the art community, but rather confronts the society with her overtly depiction of sex and decides on her own how she wants to be treated. As a result, Kusama produced and performed in The Walking Piece as a combat against critics’ accusations of her individuality and identity, and resistance to be categorized into any one modernist movement, which is similar to Lady Gaga in which they both try to “expose the limits of representation and meaning-making” (Lush, 2012, pg.
Kusama, being a foreign artist living in New York, “is disabled due to a person-environment mismatch” (Goodley, 2011, pg. 16). Within the art community, there has been an intellectual resistance to admit paintings created by non-Westerners into the avant-garde movement. The art society in the 1960s expected to see artworks from a Japanese artist to be ethnic and traditional, typically embodying spiritual attributes. As Kusama’s artworks tend to employ bold colors and repetitive patterns, conservative art critics in the Western society often disregarded Kusama’s effort in progressing the avant-garde movement, but rather referred her artwork as a lost of cultural heritage and originality that tries to imitate Western art. Thus, Kusama’s artworks were viewed as a deviation from the art society. Even though critics have regarded her method of creating artworks as unconventional and believe it was abnormal for her not to treat her mental illness, Kusama believes that art making is both the symptom of and a cure to her obsession. Unlike “the psychiatric interpretation holds that witches themselves were insane” (Ehrenreich & English, 1973, pg. 9), Kusama, despite being diagnosed with mental illness and framed as abnormal, is not a freak that allows authority to eradicate her identity and contribution to the art community, but rather confronts the society with her overtly depiction of sex and decides on her own how she wants to be treated. As a result, Kusama produced and performed in The Walking Piece as a combat against critics’ accusations of her individuality and identity, and resistance to be categorized into any one modernist movement, which is similar to Lady Gaga in which they both try to “expose the limits of representation and meaning-making” (Lush, 2012, pg.