Yayoi Kusama in Melbourne: NGV Immersive Exhibition

If you’ve ever found yourself mesmerised by endless dots stretching into infinity, or felt a strange calm wash over you inside a mirrored room, you already have some idea of what awaits at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria. The Yayoi Kusama retrospective that opened in December 2024 doesn’t just display art—it pulls you into nearly nine decades of obsessive, kaleidoscopic vision.

Immersive environments: 10 (world record) · Total artworks: close to 200 · Venue: NGV International, St Kilda Road · Dates: 15 Dec 2024 – 21 Apr 2025

The exhibition summary table below outlines the key details visitors need to know before planning their visit.

How long is Yayoi Kusama in Melbourne?

The exhibition ran from 15 December 2024 until 21 April 2025 at NGV International on St Kilda Road—roughly four months of what the NGV called the largest ever presentation of Kusama’s work in Australia (NGV Exhibition Archive). The venue extended opening hours in January 2025 to accommodate unprecedented visitor demand.

Extended hours announcement

The popularity of the exhibition prompted NGV to announce extended opening hours early in 2025. Visitors were able to experience the immersive environments across longer daily sessions, helping manage the sustained interest from both locals and tourists.

Closing date details

The final date of 21 April 2025 marked the conclusion of what became one of the most comprehensive Kusama retrospectives ever mounted globally. The exhibition occupied the ground level of NGV International for its entire duration (Whitewall Art).

The pattern is clear: four months, record attendance, and a closing date that left many visitors wishing they’d arrived earlier. For those who missed it, the tour continues elsewhere—Museum Ludwig and other international venues have hosted or are planning subsequent retrospectives.

Is Yayoi Kusama NGV worth it?

If sensory overload sounds like your idea of a good time, the answer is an emphatic yes. The NGV exhibition features a world record-breaking 10 immersive environments—more than any previous Kusama show anywhere (NGV Exhibition Overview). These aren’t displays you observe from a distance; they’re rooms you enter, rooms where mirrors multiply your reflection into infinity and polka dots seem to pulse with their own heartbeat.

Visitor experience highlights

The nine themed galleries move visitors through painting, sculpture, collage, fashion, film, and installation works spanning nearly nine decades. Outside, the St Kilda Road approach featured polka-dotted trees, while the Narcissus Garden installation presented 1,400 stainless steel balls reflecting the sky (Jenny Latto blog). Free children’s galleries offered younger visitors their own immersive Kusama experiences.

Pros and cons of attending

The trade-off is simple: you’ll spend money on a ticket, but you’ll walk away with photographs that look like fever dreams and a new appreciation for what obsession as a creative force actually looks like.

Where to see Yayoi Kusama in 2026?

The Melbourne exhibition closed on 21 April 2025, but Kusama shows continue globally. The NGV noted that the exhibition was curated in collaboration with the artist specifically for Melbourne audiences, with a brand-new large-scale installation debuting as an Australia first (Whitewall Art).

Melbourne NGV location

NGV International sits at 180 St Kilda Road in the Melbourne CBD, directly opposite the Arts Centre Melbourne. The venue is accessible via tram, train, and on foot from Flinders Street Station.

Upcoming global spots

Museum Ludwig in Cologne is among the international venues hosting major Kusama retrospectives. The artist’s own museum in Tokyo remains a pilgrimage site, while exhibitions in London, New York, and Seoul continue drawing visitors to infinity rooms that Kusama first introduced at New York’s Castellane Gallery in 1965–1966 (NGV Exhibition Page).

The implication: Australian visitors who missed the Melbourne show will need to travel internationally or wait for future domestic announcements. The Kusama Museum Tokyo offers the most concentrated dose of her ongoing practice.

What happened to Yayoi Kusama as a child?

Understanding Kusama’s childhood helps explain the art. Born in Japan in 1929, Kusama began experiencing hallucinations at age 10—visions of flowers speaking to her, dots covering everything she saw. These weren’t metaphors; they were symptoms of what she has described as a trauma that would shape her entire artistic vocabulary (NGV Yayoi Kusama at NGV).

Early trauma influences

Her mother’s controlling behaviour and her father’s infidelities compounded the psychological burden. Kusama has spoken explicitly about how her childhood experiences directly informed the infinity motifs—the endless, repetitive patterns that became her signature language.

Impact on her art

The dots and mirrors weren’t stylistic choices; they were coping mechanisms. Kusama channelled visual obsession into canvases, sculptures, and eventually rooms where the boundary between self and infinite space dissolves. The Dots Obsession environment, which debuted in 1996 with mirrors added in 1998, directly references her earliest hallucinations (NGV Exhibition Page).

The implication: every mirrored room at the NGV carries the weight of a child’s vision she transformed into a lifetime of creation. That’s the difference between seeing Kusama’s work and understanding why it feels the way it does.

What disability does Yayoi Kusama have?

Kusama has lived with severe mental illness throughout her life—conditions including anxiety, hallucinations, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies that she has described in stark, personal terms. Rather than treating these experiences as purely negative, she has reframed them as the engine of her productivity and the source of her distinctive visual language.

Mental health context

At 95 years old in 2025, Kusama continues to reside voluntarily in a psychiatric institution in Tokyo—a choice she has maintained since the 1970s. She creates art daily, attributing both her suffering and her output to the same source: an unrelenting mental landscape that most people would find unbearable.

Art as therapy

Kusama has described her art as a form of self-elimination, a way of dissolving her ego into the infinite. The repetitive dots represent, in her own words, “the accumulation of millions of flowers”—both a symptom of her obsessive attention and a transcendence of it. The NGV exhibition’s 10 immersive rooms literalise this philosophy: you step inside her coping mechanism.

What this means: Kusama’s mental health struggles aren’t footnotes to her biography; they’re the architecture of her art. The exhibition invites visitors into a world built from anxiety transformed into aesthetic power.

Related reading: Time in Melbourne

Yayoi Kusama’s record-breaking NGV exhibition in Melbourne features over 180 works and infinity mirrors, with the NGV tickets and dates guide offering key details on extended hours and tickets.

Frequently asked questions