“What kept me from ending my life was drawing and making art.” : Art, Mental health and Yayoi Kusama
Almost no creative person exists without some or the other issues which may range from physical to mental to financial. Kusama experienced hallucinations and obsessive thoughts from childhood and later described her condition as obsessive-compulsive neurosis. (Turner & Reif, n.d.) She has voluntarily chosen to stay in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo.
In a 1999 interview with BOMB, she explained that her work originated in those hallucinations and obsessional images. Calling herself as an ‘Obsessional Artist’, she developed an extraordinarily disciplined artistic practice around repetition. Dots became fields. Nets became infinity. Mirrors multiplied the self until the boundaries between the individual and the surrounding world seemed to disappear. Her concept of “self-obliteration” became an artistic method through which she explored identity, existence and the possibility of dissolving the boundaries of the self.
Kusama’s Infinity Net series, which emerged in the 1950s and continued to evolve into the early 2000s, reflects her enduring fascination with repetition and pattern. She created vast and repeated visual patterns and they became central to her art. Kusama has complained about seeing hallucinations in her childhood in the form of dots, auras and patterns that would eventually succumb her and here comes this concept of ‘self obliteration’ where she loses the boundary between the self and the other.
Pouring herself into such a world of art may have given her a sense of relief and organise her thoughts. Another most important thing is creativity. Studies have concluded expressing ourselves creatively via creative activities such as painting, writing, etc also reduces negative emotions. Kusama has expressed in many interviews that she wouldn’t have endured it all if it wasn’t for her art. (Cosslett, 2026)
This relationship between creative activity and psychological regulation also helps explain why art is used within mental-health care. It is important, however, to distinguish Kusama’s independent artistic practice from formal art therapy.
The American Art Therapy Association defines art therapy as a structured therapeutic intervention facilitated by a trained practitioner, in which art-making is used alongside psychological approaches to support emotional expression, reflection and mental wellbeing. Kusama was not necessarily practising art therapy in this clinical sense. Rather, her experience illustrates some of the ways in which creative processes can overlap with functions associated with art therapy such as sustained attention, sensory engagement, repetition and the externalisation of difficult internal experiences.
There are multiple studies which provide some support for these potential benefits. A 2026 systematic review involving 741 adults found that visual art therapy was associated with minimising symptoms of depression and anxiety. One of the reasons why this happens is because the process of making visual art needs quite a bit of concentration and thus, shifts our minds away from anxiety or depression inducing thoughts. However, the researchers emphasise that visual art therapy should be understood as a potential adjunct to established mental-health treatments, rather than a replacement for them. (Guo et al., n.d.)
The comparison therefore should not be that Kusama’s paintings were “art therapy.” Rather, her practice allows us to consider why art-making can have therapeutic functions even outside a clinical setting. The repetition of dots and nets may have provided Kusama with concentration, routine and a means of giving physical form to experiences that were difficult to contain internally. At the same time, these practices were part of her artistic development and intellectual labour, not merely symptoms or therapeutic exercises.
Seen in this context, Kusama’s repetitive practice need not be reduced to a manifestation of mental illness. It can instead be understood as an artistic practice through which she negotiated her experiences, established a sense of structure and developed an artistic language that would ultimately become central to her legacy.
Kusama’s own descriptions of painting as a way of living with her experiences suggest that the act of making or producing the art was important to her beyond the finished artwork. In this sense, Kusama’s repetition can be understood without reducing it to pathology. Painting the same dots and nets again and again may have provided concentration, routine and a way of giving physical form to experiences that were otherwise difficult to contain.
This is reflected in her infinity net series where it is believed that Kusama wanted the audience to feel what she felt inside her mind. What is more important is not whether every dot can be decoded as a symptom, but that Kusama developed a sustained practice through which she could engage with and exercise some agency over her inner world. Art here became something she could have control over.
Art, then, does not necessarily ‘cure’ psychological distress. Practising art becomes a friend, a companion that is there to assure us that everything is under control. It gives shape to what feels shapeless, creates a routine when life feels unpredictable and allows a person to experience themselves as an active maker rather than merely a subject of illness.
Written By : Ms. Shraddha Pradhan
This is such a powerful and vulnerable piece. Thank you for sharing it, your words may help someone feel less alone and remind them that support and hope are possible.
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