SARAH LOYER
I’m Sarah Loyer, and I’m a curator here at The Broad.
This is Yayoi Kusama's Longing for Eternity. It's an Infinity Mirror Room. Kusama has actually created over 20 of these infinity mirror rooms. This artwork Longing for Eternity is very similar to Love Foreverthat Kusama made in 1966. I like to think about how different it would have been to experience a mirrored room in 1966 than it might be today, in our kind of digital moment. They're both hexagons. They're both mirror-lined on the exterior and the interior. And they both have light elements that flash and make patterns inside of them.
This room has portholes that that you'll look into. There's usually two or three people looking in at a time. It's a social experience as well. So, you're both looking at yourself reflected and looking at others reflected all around you. You actually become an important part of the artwork.
Kusama's worldview is really present in all of her work, and particularly this idea of infinity and oblivion. Downstairs, we have another infinity mirror room,The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, which is a mirror room that you enter inside of. The idea of everything being connected within the universe, I think, is very clear and comes across really strongly in these works. She's able to give you the experience of what it might be like to be in an infinite space while she's putting you sort of within an enclosed, small space. And I think that's part of what people love so much about it is that you can kind of lose yourself and feel like you are one tiny speck within the universe.