Through a life of struggle with mental illness and exclusion from the art world, Kusama has built her own universe where art is both a personal expression and a means of survival.  

The documentary Kusama: Infinity (2018), directed by Heather Lenz, traces the artist’s journey from her childhood in Japan to her international recognition. The film documents her artistic evolution as well as the challenges she faced in a male-dominated world, her relationship with art as therapy, and how her work anticipated some of the most relevant currents in contemporary art.  

Kusama’s art not only represents her vision of the world but is the manifestation of a mind seeking order in chaos through repetition.

From an early age, Kusama experienced hallucinations that transformed her perception of the world. These visions, often composed of repetitive patterns and organic forms, became the foundation of her artistic language. Her need to express these patterns on canvas or in physical space led to a unique style characterized by the compulsive accumulation of dots, nets, and biomorphic figures.  

Her series of paintings Infinity Nets, begun in the 1950s, exemplifies this obsession. These works, formed by a dense repetition of small semi-circular shapes on a monochromatic background, create a sense of vibration and infinite expansion. Kusama described this process as an act of self-destruction of the ego, a dissolution of individuality into the vastness of repetition.  

In the late 1950s, Kusama moved to New York, where she immersed herself in the avant-garde art scene. In a context dominated by Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, her work stood out for its radicality. She not only expanded painting into objects and installations but also brought her art into action and performance.  

The documentary carefully reconstructs this period, emphasizing how her work influenced the development of Minimalism and Conceptual Art. However, it also reveals the extent to which her contributions were overshadowed. Kusama’s performances, where she painted bodies with polka dots in public spaces or staged anti-war protests, were groundbreaking, yet artists like Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg received greater recognition for similar ideas.  

Through interviews and archival footage, Kusama: Infinity exposes the mechanisms of exclusion that left her at the margins of the mainstream art scene. It presents her relentless struggle for recognition and her own attempts at self-promotion publishing manifestos, sending letters to gallery owners, and confronting critics who ignored her work.  

Through painting, performance, and installation, Kusama turned her internal struggle into a monumental work that transcended the boundaries of art.

One of the documentary’s most striking aspects is its treatment of Kusama’s return to Japan in the 1970s. After years of rejection and financial struggles, she voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital, where she continues to live to this day. The film does not romanticize her mental illness but rather presents it as an integral part of her existence, something she has battled but also channeled into her art.  

The film explores how she continued to create obsessively, despite being largely forgotten by the art world. It was only in the 1990s, when a new generation of curators and scholars rediscovered her work, that Kusama achieved the level of recognition that had long been denied to her.  

Rather than presenting her late success as a conventional triumph, the documentary maintains a critical perspective. It questions why Kusama was excluded for so long and examines how the art market, once indifferent to her work, later embraced her as a global sensation. 

Through intimate interviews, Kusama herself speaks about this complex relationship with fame, expressing both gratitude and a deep awareness of the injustices she endured.  

Under Lenz’s meticulous direction, the documentary weaves a narrative that is both inspiring and unsettling, revealing the profound sacrifices Kusama made in pursuit of her uncompromising artistic vision.