In a world that is too busy to look and too distracted to feel, artist Yayoi Kusama’s strong love for pumpkins is something worth celebrating. Before you roll your eyes at how pretentious that sounds – hear me out. Kusama, a Japanese artist and writer, has made the pumpkin a motif that she keeps revisiting throughout her life and career, saying that it speaks to her of “the joy of living”.
You’d be forgiven for forgetting that we’re talking about a fruit that is pretty much ignored until the week before Hallowe’en. Kusama rarely goes into detail about the reason behind this love for the plump pump, but she said she finds pumpkins “humble, amusing [and] a great comfort”, which is why she has and will continue to celebrate them in her art.
Her piece titled ‘All the Eternal Love I Have for Pumpkins’ stole the show at last summer’s exhibition at the Victoria Miro gallery in London. The mirrored room filled with neon orange pumpkins made spectators feel as if they had come to face a glowing field filled to infinity with the artist’s favourite object.
Whether they’re in the form of polished bronze sculptures at major exhibitions around the world, or in fields around her childhood home in Japan: pumpkins of all sizes, colours and materials are a constant in Kusama’s life. And here at Fruit Punch Mag, we are all about celebrating that kind of fruit love.
Hanna Yusuf
@han_ysf
fruitpunch 