This pumpkin sits on a pier on the island of Naoshima. The first art project for the Benesse art site was Open Air ’94 Out of Bounds, organized as an outdoor exhibition space in 1994. Out of Bounds referred to the crossing of borders in hope that Naoshima be linked to the rest of the world. Pumpkin (the yellow one) by Yayoi Kusama made its debut in this exhibition.
Yayoi Kusama (1929-) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. During the 1960s she was a part of the New York avant-garde scene, especially in the pop-art movement. Since participating in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993 she has been exhibiting actively and has gained widespread international recognition. In 2017 a fifty-year retrospective of her work opened at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. Also that year the Yayoi Kusama Museum was inaugurated in Tokyo.
Inside the 13 foot tall Red Pumpkin that Kusama created for the ‘Naoshima Standard Exhibition’ in 2006
