The renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has passed away in Tokyo at the age of 97. Over a decades-long career, she captivated millions of visitors worldwide with vibrant, immersive installations that blurred the boundaries between art and optical illusion.

Emerging during the pop art era, Kusama achieved a rare level of widespread popularity. Her signature polka dots, brilliant colors, and mesmerizing patterns transformed major galleries, outdoor plazas, and massive sculptures across the globe, drawing massive crowds in cultural capitals from New York and London to Tokyo.

Her artistic journey was deeply rooted in personal experience. Beginning in the 1960s, she translated childhood visions of luminous flashes and repeating dots into groundbreaking creative expressions. By utilizing mirrors, careful lighting, and continuous patterns, she constructed legendary Infinity Mirror Rooms that created the perception of endless space.

Kusama achieved international prominence after representing her home country at the Venice Biennale during the 1990s. Following that breakthrough, her work was showcased at prestigious cultural institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and London's Tate Modern. A major retrospective at the Tate in 2012 cemented her global status, while a subsequent extended run of her mirror installations at the same museum proved immensely popular with the public.

Her distinct aesthetic reached far beyond traditional gallery walls. In 2017, visitors to the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC actively participated in her vision by placing hundreds of thousands of polka dot stickers across a completely white room. Commercial collaborations also brought her whimsical touch to the mainstream, such as a colossal sculpture of the artist that towered over a prominent Paris boutique on the Champs-Élysées in 2023. That same year, her oversized figures and sculptural animals took over Aviva Studios during the venue's opening in Manchester, while her exhibits continued to draw massive attendance in places like Melbourne.

Despite her immense global fame and heavy public engagement, Kusama chose to live voluntarily in a psychiatric hospital for decades, maintaining a steady artistic output from Tokyo. Her passing marks the end of an extraordinary era for contemporary art, leaving behind a legacy defined by boundless imagination and unforgettable visual environments.

Reporting based on coverage first published by BBC News. Read the original report at BBC News.