Kusama’s Self-Obliteration (1968) A film by YAYOI KUSAMA & JUD YALKUT. Colour, Sound, 16 mm, 24 mins.

In this psychedelic experimental film, avant-garde Japanese artist YAYOI KUSAMA gives birth to a new world. This new world begins with her most beloved POLKA DOT. Compulsive, mystical, psychotic, erotic and surreal – these are all words that could be used to describe the universe conjured by Kusama’s art, who has tirelessly transferred polka dots across canvases, bodies, sculptures and landscapes.

Most famous for her paintings and immersive installations, Kusama rose to international fame in the Sixties. In the second half of this decade, Kusama briefly expanded her work into film and performance through staged public ‘happenings’, inspired by psychedelic culture and the free love spirit of the times.

Her close association to the American psychedelic counterculture of the times is most evident in Kusama’s Self-Obliteration, the only one film ever made by Kusama. Imagined by Kusama and created in collaboration with Jud Yalkut, the cast features Kusama herself, a cat, a horse and an entourage of free-spirited men and women.

From the zen morning waters of a lake to an orgiastic body-painting gathering, Kusama materialises and multiplies polka dots across every surface possible, be it a tree, a cat or someone’s penis. Accompanied by a psychedelic soundtrack, Kusama’s Self-Obliteration evokes the mystical preoccupations central to Kusama’s work: the unison between man and environment, singularity and plurality, infinity and oblivion.

Needless to say that The Third Eye is madly IN LOVE with Kusama’s tantalising film.

Text by Sophie Pinchetti

Check out The Third Eye’s tribute to the Great Kusama here, featuring her works and insights into her artistic process and philosophy.

“Polka dots are a way to infinity.”

– Yayoi Kusama

“When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environments.”