#research project

I'm doing an investigation into fan language online, looking at the use of language in a negative way, typically towards male athletes.

If you could fill out this short form, and share it, I would greatly appreciate it!

Hiii! If you have the time and energy and would like to help out a wonderful psychology student today (or you just love questionnaires haha), my best friend really needs some more responses for her research project (she only needs 50 more!)💛

Your responses are completely confidential and the only requirements are that you are 18+ and are not currently diagnosed with a major psychiatric condition.

Link here!

If I shared what I'm doing in school right now, would that be cool? It has nothing to do with Sanders Sides or fandoms. It's chemistry.

Nah

it's a research project for psychology class on perception and prejudice

And all 17 of these people have become a statistic

🤍🤍

Hello everyone! Here is the research I did on Yayoi Kusama recently.

My research subject is the contemporary visual artist Yayoi Kusama. She works in many mediums like sculpture and installation, fashion, painting, poetry, and performance art, and is one of the most successful and influential female artists in the world.

Yayoi Kusama was born March 22, 1929. Her family in Nagano Prefecture owned a successful plant nursery that supported them through a poor economy. While her parents did not approve of her becoming an artist, they let her attend the Shiritsu Bijutsu Kōgei Gakkō, which was a prep school for Kyoto University of the Arts. In 1957, she sadly destroyed most of her early artwork before she came to America. When faced with a limited amount of success in her New York studio, she began dipping into performance art that critiqued the art market and explored the concept of self-obliteration. Several times, her and her performers were arrested for public indecency as most of the performances involved painting dots onto nude performers. She moved back to Tokyo in 1973 and exhibited more intimate, small-scale work after the death of her father. She eventually picked back up her large-scale sculptures and began expressing frustration with the art world she had known in America, critiquing its roots in nationalism and consumerism.

The polka-dot theme that is in nearly all of Kusama’s work goes back to some of her very first drawings when she was a child. This silk painting, Harvest, is one of the few old Kusama paintings that she didn’t destroy. She painted it when she was sixteen. Pacific Ocean was based on the wave patterns she saw from the plane while flying to the U.S. It was one of her first paintings in a collection dubbed Infinity Nets that all consist of tiny loops that span the entire canvas like a net. Now That You Died is one of her collages from right after she moved back to Japan. Pollen came after Kusama’s success started to rebuild. Pumpkin was her first permanent outdoor sculpture, which is at the Benesse Art Site in Naoshima. This Infinity Mirror Room is one of over twenty. This particular one is at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas.

I’ve been familiar with Kusama’s work since my senior year of high school. I went to Crystal Bridges and saw Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart is Dancing into the Universe, and this is one of the pictures I took from that visit. I believe this was my first time encountering Kusama’s work. I also did some research on her for one of my projects in foundation year, which I’ll talk about in a minute. During that research I became familiar with her Dots Obsession exhibitions. They’re a group of exhibitions of large-scale work using inflatable pieces and mirrors that react to each gallery space in different ways.

Much of Kusama’s life and work simply couldn’t fit into this presentation as her work and career have essentially spanned 90 years. She’s done a lot. Because of the volume of information about Kusama, I tried to focus the scope of my research to the things I find most interesting and inspiring about her, while allowing room for information that I didn’t know about before. Since I was most familiar with some of her more recent work, I tried to learn a lot more about her earlier work while making this project. My most useful resource during my research was an article about Kusama by M+ Magazine, though I also referenced her official website, and an interview she did with The Broad. The good thing about Kusama’s fame and publicity is that I had no trouble finding information about her for this presentation. The drawback is that there’s hundreds of photos and artworks and articles to sort through and narrow down.

Despite the high volume of information I was working with, I found three areas that I want to research further on my own time. During the sixties and early seventies, before she moved back to Japan, Kusama was heavily counterculture and supported the gay rights movement. I really enjoy her performance pieces from that time period, so I want to look into them more. I also didn’t know she was involved in fashion before this research, so I’d like to see more of her work in that field. This particular piece is from her first collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Another interesting piece of information is that Kusama loves pumpkins. Like, she’s obsessed with them. Polka-dots are the most prominent thing in her art, but it turns out pumpkins are her favorite thing ever, and I think that’s very charming. I want to see more of her pumpkin-based artwork. I’m also curious to see if she has any pumpkin inspired fashion.

Why did I pick her? I mean, first things first, the sheer aura that this woman possesses. The reason I picked Kusama for this project is because she’s one of my favorite artists and a cultural icon. Despite the disapproval, conservative upbringing, and capitalistic culture she was up against, Kusama continued to make things that she wanted to make. Her fame had periods where it rose and fell, but she never completely changed her entire look just to appeal to a new decade. The shifts in her work happened very organically. I think it’s rare for an artist who’s been working this long to remain so consistent, and that’s one of the great things about Kusama.

This is the project that I did in foundation year that was inspired by Kusama. This woodpecker birdhouse was something I was really stumped on the design for, but I found Kusama’s work and finally had an idea. The polka-dot motif is obvious, but I also wanted to incorporate a lot of nature like Kusama does in her work. That’s when I decided on the mushroom shape, and to make the top a planter. My favorite thing about making this was not letting anything be impossible. The shape of the roof was the most difficult thing to make, the technicians in the woodshop didn’t even think it was possible to do, and like four of them were watching me use the table saw. Being able to exhibit that perseverance that Kusama herself so often shows made me admire her even more as an artist.

All of Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms also have an influence on me because I love playing with infinite spaces, lighting, and reflective surfaces in my work. Another big focus of mine is liminal spaces, and while these don’t quite exhibit the feeling of liminality, they’re similar in structure and setup. In her interview with The Broad, Kusama said: “Eternal unlimited universe, love for humanity, and longing for peace in the world—these concepts become increasingly serious through the development of my philosophy of life and art.” I think that really encompasses my outlook on things both as a person and an artist. Kusama has always been forward-thinking and unapologetic. Those are things that I want to better encompass and let shine through the work that I create.

Moving forward from the limited research that I’ve done here, I think the main thing I want to take away for myself is Kusama’s outlook on life and philosophy, because many of the sentiments she expresses so closely mirror my own. Kusama once said: “The gap between me, and my parents and society was maddeningly irritating and unreasonable. Probably I already had the sense of despair all about me and the world around me when I was in my mother’s womb.” The isolation Kusama felt as a strange child in a conservative space, the way she describes it as “maddening” immediately resonated with me. I think that “maddening” finally puts the perfect word to how I experienced my own childhood. What I want for my art is encapsulated by this Kusama quote: “I would be more than happy as an artist, if my little piece of art could, in some way or another, reach out to as many people as possible, and eventually act as a means to cultivate critical eyes.” There’s going to be many people who simply won’t get my art. The same is true for any artist. My biggest hope is that something in my work might make something click for someone else. Even the smallest details can open people’s eyes to a world they were once blind to. In a world that is so quickly pulling away from intellectual pursuits, I want to not just make art for art’s sake but art for knowledge’s sake, and art for media literacy’s sake, and hope that my life and work can connect people with similar minds to my own.

Thanks for reading!!

-Hymn

Crystal Bridges. “Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room―My Heart Is Dancing into the Universe: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.” Crystal Bridges Museum, 2023, crystalbridges.org/calendar/yayoi-kusamas-infinity-mirrored-room/. 

Kusama, Yayoi. “Information: Yayoi Kusama.” Information | Yayoi Kusama, 2026, www.yayoi-kusama.jp/e/information/index.html. 

M+. “The Life and Career of Yayoi Kusama: A Timeline: M+ Museum.” M+ Magazine, 2022, www.mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/yayoi-kusama-biography-timeline/.