Yayoi Kusama

For Yayoi Kusama, works like NETS I (1997) are a vital form of personal therapy. The repetition of these persistent curved brushstrokes offer Kusama both a self-soothing mechanism and a means of organizing her emotions in a brilliantly expressive way. One of Kusama's most vivid hallucinations from childhood involved a "universe covered with red flowers" – she has rendered NETS I in the same exhilarating red as her original vision and, in doing so, pays powerful homage to the genesis of her enduring Infinity Nets series.