Listen to
Mika Yoshitake:
Notice how Kusama made this red flower sculpture by stuffing work gloves and painting them red. You can think of the glove, with its five fingers, as a small flower on its own. As the gloves repeat from stem to leaves to petals, it is almost like a cell, multiplying to form one gigantic flower.
Soon after making this red flower, Kusama expanded her practice and created the flower sculptures on view in the centre of this room. Her slightly wilting Red Flower evolved into biomorphic monster-like plants that stand with outstretched arms, exuding vitality.
Describing the act of making art as ‘an outburst of [her] passion in desperation’, Kusama continues to reinvent her practice. This work speaks of her desire to live like a red flower—a symbol of growth and regeneration that overcomes obstacles and rises despite limitations.
Narrator:
Red Flower is created by Yayoi Kusama in 1980. It is a soft sculpture that looks like a giant, crimson flower. The sculpture is made of cotton hand gloves, fabric, and stuffed cotton. It is displayed on the ground and measures 52 centimetres high, 106 centimetres wide, and 467 centimetres long, approximately the length of three adults with their arms outstretched.
The top of the sculpture is shaped like a flower bud, which is as big as a circle made by the arms of an adult and is made with smooth fabric. The rest of the flower is covered entirely in crimson appendages that resemble wound tissue. These appendages are made of hundreds of stuffed hand gloves, dyed red and stitched together in overlapping layers.
The flower stem is long and bent. Two short stems, about one-fifth of the length of the main stem, branch off around the middle on either side. The main stem is connected to the flower bud, surrounded by a ring of red gloves that look like petals.