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Yayoi Kusama, a world-renowned Japanese artist, increased her international reputation with her 2021 show at the New York Botanical Garden entitled “Cosmic Nature.” Best known for her Infinity Mirror Rooms and Dots Obsession installations, Kusama will be the focus of the opening documentary in the first “Behind the Artist Film Series” at the Everson Museum of Art.

The viewing of the film, entitled “Kusama: Infinity,” is free for members at the Everson Museum of Art and $8 for general admission. The film will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday evening and will run for one hour and 16 minutes.

“Kusama: Infinity” was created by filmmaker and director Heather Lenz in 2018, and will provide a new intimate look at Kusama’s journey as a contemporary artist. Garth Johnson, curator of ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art, said the documentary will provide compelling context for Kusama’s latest “victory lap.”

“It seemed natural to kick off the exhibition with one of the most high-profile artists in our collection,” Johnson said.

The Everson’s “Behind the Artist Film Series,” conceptualized by Syracuse University Visual and Performing Arts professor Nancy Keefe Rhodes, aims to celebrate both cinema and the diverse range of citizens in Syracuse, Johnson said.

This film follows Kusama’s rise to success as the top-selling living female artist in the world. In addition to being a woman of color in a historically white, male-dominated industry, Kusama continues to experience mental health issues, Johnson said.

Through all of it, Johnson said, Kusama has been nothing but open to the public about these challenges. This documentary will explore how this aspect of her life fuels her passion for her work.

“I fight pain, anxiety and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art,” Kusama said in an interview with Infinity Net.

After the showing of “Kusama: Infinity,” the Everson Museum of Art will offer an informal discussion, led by Johnson, as well as an examination of two of Kusama’s smaller sculptural pieces. Johnson hopes that this additional feature will spark discussion about Kusama and provide an original angle on her work.

The “Behind the Artist Film Series” will showcase different films about various contemporary artists. Each new installment of the series will be presented in the Everson’s Hosmer Auditorium on the first Thursday of each month. The series will run until June 2022 and will feature films about artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cai Guo-Qiang, Enrique Metinides and Thomas Allen Harris.

“I felt this film series was an opportunity to highlight some artists and communities that often get left out,” Rhodes said. “This is a next step to expand and deepen the museum’s ongoing commitment to those artists and their communities.”

Rhodes curated the “Behind the Artist Film Series” with the Syracuse community in mind, in that this new dimension to the Everson will enrich the culture in the city. Rhodes said “Kusama: Infinity” is a well-made and accessible film, and since the Everson houses seven of Kusama’s pieces, the documentary is all the more intriguing.

“The combination of cinema and movies about the arts can be very healing to our community,” Rhodes said. “I want the community to know that there is so much to the arts than they may have imagined.”

Published on December 2, 2021 at 12:47 am