Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929)

Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), a resident in a psychiatric institution since 1977, coined the term “Obsessional Art” to describe her own work and its expression of personal neurosis. The 1960s-70s series Your Portrait by Tetsumi Kudo (1935-1990) also exemplifies the Obsessional Art’s aesthetics of the “diseased” mind. Each work features face and hand fragments along with dismembered body parts, electronic gadgets and dead plants in metal cages or fish tanks.