In pictures: The dotty world of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97

Using bright colours, shapes, patterns and reflections, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who has died at the age of 97, was known for creating extraordinary immersive worlds that delighted millions of people around the globe.

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Kusama emerged as part of the pop art movement – and was among a select group of artists whose work became truly popular with a mass audience, attracting crowds to exhibitions from Tokyo to New York and London.

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Her trademark polka dots covered entire galleries and giant sculptures, and she also used mirrors and lights to create the effect of shapes and patterns disappearing into infinity.

Actress Julia Fox (below) was among those at the opening of her exhibition in Melbourne, Australia in 2024.

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Kusama said she saw hallucinations of dots and lights as a child, and used those visions in her art from the 1960s.

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Kusama made a major global breakthrough after representing Japan at the Venice Biennale in the 1990s.

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She is pictured inside one of her Infinity Mirror Rooms in Paris in 2001 above, and with fellow Japanese artist Yoko Ono in Sydney in 2000 below.

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She had exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

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Visitors themselves applied more than 800,000 polka dot stickers to a white room (and their own faces) at the Smithsonian Institute’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC in 2017.

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Kusama’s 2012 retrospective at the Tate Modern was followed by an installation of her Infinity Mirror Rooms at the same venue from 2021, which drew huge audiences and was extended several times.

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In 2023, a giant figure of Kusama was installed to tower over Louis Vuitton’s flagship store on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

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Her giant figures, shapes and animals filled Manchester’s Aviva Studios when the venue opened in 2023.

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From Manchester to Melbourne – her spots were also a hit in the Australian city two years ago.

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She had voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades, and died in a Tokyo hospital earlier this month.

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