The artist I chose is Yayoi Kusama. She was one of the most famous contemporary artists. Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929. She had a misery childhood which also influenced her style of arts. Yayoi Kusama’s mother was mean to her and often verbally abused her. She used to send Yayoi Kusama to spy on her father. Yayoi Kusama once saw her father having sex with one of his lovers. This shocked Yayoi Kusama and she was afraid of anything relate to sex for a long time. Another thing which influenced Yayoi Kusama’s art style is her mental disease, Schizophrenia. According to Yayoi Kusama, she was able to see vivid hallucinations since she was only 10 years old. Her mother didn’t care about her mental issues which made her schizophrenia became more and more series. Although the schizophrenia made Yayoi Kusama’s life harder, it brought inspirations to Yayoi Kusama. She could saw flashes and vivid dots and she made her hallucinations came true as real art. Yayoi Kusama lived both in New York and Tokyo, so her arts contained a sense of mixed culture. Yayoi Kusama’s art signature is dot. She uses dots in each of her works and creates an environment of hallucinations. Her famous work including infinity dots mirrored room, you Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies, Gleaming Lights of the Souls and Pumpkins all inspired me. I wanted to put the elements of dots, vivid color and flashes in to my project. Yayoi Kusama’s fashion style is the same as her art style. She only wears clothes or dress with infinite dots on them.
From the three exhibitions that we visited, I drew inspirations from Frida Kahlo’s exhibition: Appearance can be deceiving. She used lots of symbols and metaphors in her paintings. Frida Kahlo also add lots of elements about her Mexican nation to her art work. According to the photos of Frida Kahlo, she only wears Mexican clothes or clothes that could show her culture.
I did three drawings about three different clothes for the project. Each of them included the elements of dots. I also made three prototypes including the hats and the shoes for my drawings. I intended to made my project based on my third drawing which used red dots. I wanted to use black chiffon to make the top and the skirt. For the dots, I decided to use red paillette from different sizes. I wanted that my clothes can give audience a sense of hallucinations for my audience.
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