Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has died aged 97, leaving a distinctive body of work spanning polka-dotted paintings, sculptures, happenings, films and infinity mirror-room installations. Her art transformed recurring visual hallucinations and lifelong psychological distress into images of repetition, immersion and “self-obliteration”, making her one of contemporary art’s most recognisable figures.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama grew up in a troubled family and began painting despite her mother’s opposition, often reusing plant sacks as canvases during the 1940s. After early solo exhibitions in Japan, she moved towards the New York art world in the late 1950s, where critics and artists including Donald Judd recognised her originality; later writers also examined her position as an Asian woman working in a predominantly white, male art scene.