Understanding Place

 

Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Rooms

Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room at The Broad Museum, Los Angeles, CA

This is my landscape. It is how I see the world and my place within it. I first had the privilege of standing in this room by the artist, Yayoi Kusama, in NYC at MOMA years ago. It captivated me. I felt a deep sense of elation and belonging. The room reflected back the light on the mirrored ceiling, walls, and water on the floor. It drew me in like a celestial being who had found their home. I walked away brighter and shinier. Standing in a new version at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles this last year, I had the same powerful, levitating emotions course through me. Do I see myself as one star among trillions? Yes I do. Buddhist philosophy, years of spiritual questioning and six decades have brought me to this Understanding Place. 

Because I was overwhelmed with peace and weightlessness as I walked out of Infinity Mirrored Room, I didn’t feel compelled to read about what the artist intended until now. During an interview in 2017, Yayoi described the work as “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” (https://www.thebroad.org/exclusive-interview-yayoi-kusama). I felt it, and still do. Barbara Kingsolver writes, “It’s a grand distraction, this window of mine. “Beauty and grace are performed,” writes Annie Dillard, “whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” Kingsolver’s window are my eyes. I seek out beauty and am continually awed by it. For me, it isn’t just in nature because I see it everywhere. And because I see beauty wherever I am, everywhere is my place.

Infinity Mirrored Room by Yayoi Kusama, 2019

I’ve lived in twenty different dwellings over my lifetime. Each one carries a piece of my history. Some have had nature and open spaces for acres, some only indoor plants. There were many years I felt compelled to be near water and so I lived with a creek, a pond and waterfall. Each property I’ve owned has been transformed into a landscape indigenous to the region, drought tolerant and swarming with butterflies and bees. I have felt driven to create unique, pesticide free environments ripe with bugs and birds and creatures, whether it’s urban or rural. The last two homes have been more wild than before.”…(T)his is not hard to understand: falling in love with a place, being in love with a place, wanting to care for a place, and see it remain intact as a wild piece of the planet” (Williams p16). I don’t, however, feel bound to stay but move freely to allow others to enjoy the creation.

My goal is to leave the planet better than when I arrived. If I do my part and others do theirs, it will be.This, I believe, is Williams bedrock democracy. That we stand individually and together to keep our ‘wildness” free from harm and do our part publicly to make it so. I protest when huge oaks are scheduled for destruction, I write to publicly appointed officials when massive development is being proposed in our area, unless it’s affordable housing for the homeless and less fortunate. I am a privileged white woman who has chosen to use her voice for preservation. Sometimes it’s the only voice, other times it’s one among many.

bell hooks, in Touching the Earth, describes the loss of the connection to nature among black people. “If we think of urban life as a location where black folks learned to accept a mind/body split that made it possible to abuse the body, we can better understand the growth of nihilism and despair in the black psyche. And we can know that when we talk about healing that psyche we must also speak about restoring our connection to the natural world” (p387). Could this also be true of all human beings? I know I derive a great sense of peace and clarity when in the natural world. I watched a raccoon move across the street early this morning, watching and avoiding the two large dogs and their owner as they walked by. It was an intense moment for myself and the raccoon, both hoping it would make it to safety and back home where it belonged. We have, after all, encroached on wild animal territory, claiming it as ours and feeling as though they have no right to be where we are.

My homeMy home

My home

“In an ideal world, a world we might well inhabit one day, we may not need to “designate” wilderness, so evolved will be our collective land ethic, our compassion for all manner of life, so responsive and whole. We will not have to “preserve” or “protect” land because we will have learned what it means to be “good stewards,” to see the larger community as an embrace of all species. I pray there will indeed come a time, when our lives regarding the domestic and the wild will be seamless” (Williams p18).

“When the Earth is sacred to us, our bodies can also be sacred to us” (hooks p368).

 

Annotated Bibliography

Loyer, Sarah. “An Exclusive Interview with Yayoi Kusama,” https://www.thebroad.org/exclusive-interview-yayoi-kusama. 2017.                                             This brief interview explains the creation of Yayoi Kusama’s installation piece, The Infinity                Room(s) and the work leading up to it’s creation. Kusama suffers from lifelong mental              illness and speaks seldom in public so most of the explanation is done in the                         questioning by the interviewer with Kusama leaving one sentence long, profound                     statements.

Williams, Terry Tempest. Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert. Vintage, 2002, pp. 3-19.              Terry Tempest Williams analyzes the struggle of keeping Utah, Colorado, New Mexico         and Arizona’s public lands closed to environmental disasters such as oil drilling. He                 looks at a history of policy changes aimed at opening lands for removal of natural                   resources and argues that wilderness must be our bedrock democracy, where nature is         placed in a hierarchal priority.

 

 

4 thoughts on “Understanding Place

  1. Greetings T. I appreciated your response to my blog, and would look at the link you sent, and enjoyed reading about your relocation. In spite of its racist and brutal history , Georgia is an interesting place to visit-beaches, mountains, parks and wilderness, and even wineries-yes. So come visit. The monument is majestic despite its representation. And Georgians-a growing percentage, have shed, and continue to shed the ghosts of the past. Many consider themselves conservatives, and are rooted in that mindset; but change is present.
    bridget.

  2. Hello Tari, really enjoyed reading this post from you. The image you posted is really cool and I would love to visit that exhibit someday. I’m glad you choose an unconventional place as well. Especially since many of our other classmate are from more conventional wildernesses. If you could, I would love to know more about your experiences with the Infinity Mirrored Room, how did you find out about it, what were you expectations, etc.

    I also liked when you described the way you’ve always brought nature into your homes with butterflies and bees, two creatures I have always wanted to raise. While I haven’t had the privilege to live in so many different homes (just 2 so far) I’ve always had animals and plants around me. I am especially fond of freshwater fish. Currently I have five fish tanks setup, which total about 80 gallons of water. I have bigger fish tanks and more knowhow than a lot of those around me and have begun to view my apartment as a bit of a sanctuary, especially for Betta fish (a species I am particularly defensive about). So I think we share a little bit of experience there (sorry if this reply ended up being more about me than you, I have a history of rambling). \

    I’ll end on one note. Your home is beautiful and I hope to someday have a place like that to call my own. You have clearly already lived such a fulfilling life.

  3. Hey!
    The part about your blog that stood out the most to me was one- the installation of the infinity mirrored room and two that you have lived/moved into 20 different homes and how you transform those spaces. The installation plays with light and perspective and then your personal experience seems to have had an element of temporality.

    This brings to mind an installation artist, Jenny Sabin who uses robotically produced bioluminescent fibers to create floating and temporary structures. These structures although machine-made create organic shapes like the cell wall of plants for example. At night these fibers let off different light and in combination with the organic shapes create an interesting natural atmosphere like your underwater or, in a forest. The image you posted from the mirror installation looks to me like a cityscape.

    Here is the link!
    https://www.jennysabin.com/

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