Yayoi Kusama’s installation Narcissus Garden originated in 1966, when the artist first participated, albeit unofficially, in the Venice Biennale. This expansive and immersive work comprises mirrored spheres displayed en masse to create a dynamic reflective field. In Venice, Kusama installed the spheres on a lawn in front of the Italian Pavilion. Signs placed among them were inscribed with the words ‘Narcissus Garden, Kusama’ and ‘Your Narcissism for Sale’. During the vernissage, Kusama, dressed in a kimono, remained with the installation, offering individual spheres for sale (at $2, or 1,200 lira a piece). This succès de scandale was both revolutionary – a comment on the promotion of the artist through the media and a critique of the mechanisation and commodification of the art market – and deeply connected to history, evoking the Greek myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection (and paid the price for doing so).

Regarded as a pivotal in Kusama’s career, Narcissus Garden anticipates many of the radical performances that would become a focus of her time in New York during the late 1960s, while encapsulating key aspects of Kusama’s wider practice – allusions to microscopic and macroscopic worlds, a preoccupation with the infinite and sublime – that remain compelling in her art to this day. It is one of the first works by the artist to explore the optical and psychological potential of the mirrored surface as a means of transcending the limits of the physical world and creating a participatory experience in which the viewer is cast as the subject of the work. Connecting profoundly with global audiences, iterations of Narcissus Garden, each with their own distinct character, have subsequently been presented, both indoors and outdoors, on land and water, at venues around the world, including Central Park, New York City, as part of the 2004 Whitney Biennial, The Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut in 2016, and, most recently, at Fort Tilden, New York, for Rockaway! 2018 presented by MoMA PS1 (shown here).

Image: Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden, © Yayoi Kusama, courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore/Shanghai and Victoria Miro, London/Venice. Installation view Rockaway 2018!, Fort Tilden, New York, July 1–September 3, 2018. Photography: Marisa J Futernick