Yayoi Kusama in Paris: 5 Monumental Installations and Exhibitions That Marked the Capital

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From Haussmann facades covered in multicoloured dots to dark rooms lined with infinite mirrors, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama left her psychedelic mark on Paris's urban landscape. A major figure of contemporary art and a pioneer of the avant-garde and pop art, the artist has passed away, leaving behind an instantly recognisable visual universe. Obsessive and immersive, her work rests on the infinite repetition of circular motifs — the famous polka dots — and on soft sculptures and optical games designed to make the viewer lose all sense of space and time.

The monumental invasion of the Champs-Élysées and the Pont Neuf

In 2023, the capital turned into an open-air gallery during the artist's collaboration with the house of Louis Vuitton. A giant, several-metre-tall replica of Yayoi Kusama appeared to be painting the facade of the historic Champs-Élysées boutique with her own hands. A few kilometres away, facing the Pont Neuf and La Samaritaine, another monumental sculpture towered over the banks of the Seine. These urban apparitions drew huge queues of curious onlookers and contemporary-art lovers eager to immortalise these unusual installations in the heart of the 8th and 1st arrondissements.

A giant inflatable pumpkin at the foot of the Vendôme Column

Remember: in October 2019, during FIAC Hors les Murs, walkers discovered with astonishment an enormous black-speckled yellow inflatable pumpkin, erected in front of the jewellers of the prestigious Place Vendôme (1st arrondissement). Titled "Life of the Pumpkin Recites, All About the Biggest Love for the People", this ten-metre monumental sculpture celebrated one of the artist's favourite themes. For Kusama, the pumpkin — which she grew as a child with her family in Japan — represented a warm, generous and humorous form, creating a joyful, poetic contrast with the square's rigorous classical architecture.

The immersive experience at the Centre Pompidou

Long before this wave swept the grand boulevards, Paris had celebrated Kusama's genius back in 2011 with a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. Visitors flocked to step inside her famous Infinity Mirror Rooms, closed spaces where mirrors and LED lanterns create the illusion of an endless cosmos. According to studio anecdotes, the artist conceived these spaces to materialise her own childhood hallucinations, seeking to dissolve her body into the immensity of the universe — a concept she called self-obliteration.

The illusion of a "pool" of tentacles at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Among the most striking memories for visitors to the bois de Boulogne is the famous installation Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli's Field (Floor Show), from the Fondation Louis Vuitton collection. Entering this mirror-lined room, the public literally felt they were leaning over a strange immersive pool: the floor is entirely covered with hundreds of soft fabric protrusions in white speckled with bright red dots. Through the infinite reflections of the walls, these organic sculptures resembling mushrooms or corals seemed to stretch like a speckled sea without shores, creating an unforgettable immersive sensory experience.

The Kusama style: between avant-garde, pop art and self-obliteration

What defines Kusama's language above all is obsessive accumulation. Born in Matsumoto in 1929, the artist quickly rose to prominence at the crossroads of pop art, conceptual art and minimalism. She often recounted that her first polka-dot and infinity-net motifs had germinated in childhood during intense hallucinations, when the flowers of the family home seemed to cover the walls, the ceiling and her own body. She theorised this approach as "self-obliteration", inviting the viewer to dissolve their individuality into the cosmos.