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This lecture will take place online. Registered students will receive login instructions.
Guest Curator Mika Yoshitake discusses the organic forms central to Kusama's unique vision that integrates nature and human nature, the earthly and the cosmic. Emphasizing the pivotal role of biomorphic imagery from both microcosmic and macrocosmic perspectives, Yoshitake examines the visceral impact of Kusama's artistic language and the ways life and afterlife profoundly coexist in the artist's lifelong journey of embracing the unknown.

Mika Yoshitake, Ph.D., Guest Curator for KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature, specializes in postwar Japanese art. As Curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2011-18), she curated Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors (2017-19) among other exhibitions.

Upcoming curatorial projects include the international tour of Yoshitomo Nara (2021-2022) at LACMA, a major retrospective at M+ Hong Kong (2022-23), and Breath(e): Towards Climate and Social Justice (2024) at the Hammer Museum.

Curator of the AICA-USA award-winning exhibition, Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha (2012), Yoshitake also curated Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.

Photo Credit: Life, 2015, Fiberglass-reinforced plastic, tiles, resin. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore/Shanghai

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