At the Memorial Art Gallery, step into an immersive art installation by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and experience the wonder of your reflection bouncing off of mirrored walls and floating orbs. The piece is called “Infinity Mirrored Room: Let’s Survive Together” and is on display until May 5.
The temporary exhibition is on loan from the Art Gallery of Ontario, and during its stay, the MAG is featuring the women artists in their permanent collection through their Represent: Great Women Artists at the MAG exhibit.
Each guest is allotted one minute to explore the mirrored room, roughly the size of a dorm room here on campus, with one mirrored post in the middle (don’t run into it). Reflective balls hang from the ceiling and sit on the floor, and the effect is the trippy experience of seeing your reflection strewn across every surface in sight.
After the minute is up, the monitor at the exhibit opens the door and explains the time limit: Kusama herself found that after a minute, the human eye naturally begins to find flaws in the installation. We pick out the cracks in the mirror panes, the strings holding the mirrored orbs in the air, and the smudges from accidental fingerprints.
Kusama is a Japanese artist who was born in Matsumoto City in 1929. She experienced auditory and visual hallucinations, which compelled her to draw net-like and polka-dot patterns from a young age. Her art typically depicts obsessive repetition through the use of lighting and mirrors — shown very obviously in the Mirrored Room at the MAG.
She has created art prolifically, and her work has been on display in over 20 countries. In 2016, she received the prestigious Order of Culture Award from the Imperial Family of Japan, the first woman to receive such an award. Kusama now lives and works in Japan, home of the Yayoi Kusama Museum.
UR students can get into both the MAG and the Kusama exhibits for free with their student IDs. The exhibit is wheelchair accessible, but you cannot bring in coats, bags, or strollers — there is a cubby to store these items while experiencing the exhibit.
