Yayoi Kusama expresses ‘deep regret’ for anti-Black statements

Kusama’s writings have been criticized for portraying Black people as hypersexual, primitive beings. In her 2003 autobiography, “Infinity Net,” she describes them as “exotic” based on pictures she said she has seen in books. Commenting on a photo of a Black child, she wrote: “I envisioned America as a land full of these strange, barefooted children and virgin primeval forests.”

In the Japanese edition of “Infinity Net” she states that her former New York neighborhood, Greenwich Village, was transforming into a “slum” due to “black people shooting each other out front, and homeless people sleeping there.” 

The sentence was omitted from the English translation of the book. 

Her 1984 novel “The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street” also contains descriptions of Black characters’ smells and genitalia that art writer Dexter Thomas pointed to in a June article in Hyperallergic, noting that the white characters in the novel were not fetishized in this way. 

“(I)n nearly every instance that Black people appear in works referenced by the compilation, they seem to mainly function as tools to provide shock or story development,” Thomas wrote of the book “Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now,” a compilation of some of Kusama’s writings published earlier this year.  

Kusama’s 1971 play “Tokyo Lee” describes its one Black character as a “WILD-looking, hairy, coal-black savage.”

Chronicle staff writer Soleil Ho addressed Kusama’s history in a recent column, criticizing the SFMOMA’s choice to feature the artist. In an email response to Ho, museum Director Christopher Bedford said that “SFMOMA stands firmly against these and all anti-Black sentiments.”

In a more recent phone interview with the Chronicle on Friday, Bedford said, “We can use this moment as a catalyst for a broader interrogation of what it means to present artists in our galleries.”

To that end, SFMOMA is creating a series of public programs slated for the spring of 2024 meant to address how museums and audiences navigate the work of artists with problematic histories, led by Gamynne Guillotte, SFMOMA’s chief education and community engagement officer. Bedford noted that Guillotte was “strong on the point that we need to tackle this, not only in relationship to Kusama, but actually in relationship to art history more broadly.”

“I think it is a tremendous leadership opportunity for SFMOMA,” Bedford added. “In lots of ways, the statement that Kusama herself made has opened the door for us to become leaders in the field and thinking about the relationship between authorial complexity and artistic expression.”