How to see Yayoi Kusama’s unique infinity room art piece in North Carolina
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The box is unassuming. Or at least as unassuming as a 7-foot-tall metallic box can be.
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The dinner plate-sized circles cut into the sides of the box, where bright flashes of light spill out, tempts visitors to peer inside.
Once you do, it’s a kaleidoscopic display of changing color, dots, lights and bulbs, with mirrors creating illusions and chances to see the reactions of those peering inside, including your own.
“It’s immediately engaging and accessible,” said Linda Dougherty, Chief Curator and Contemporary Art Curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art. “And it’s just when you look inside the portals, it is this kind of amazing experience of seeing yourself reflected in the work of art and seeing the other people who are looking through the windows. It facilitates, I think, a sense of kind of social engagement and interaction that you don’t often have in a museum when you’re looking at a work of art.”
It’s one of the first pieces of artwork that greets visitors as they enter the Global Contemporary gallery in the East Building of the North Carolina Museum of Art. Created by Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama, it is one of just about 20 Infinity Mirror Rooms and the only one permanently on display in North Carolina.
Kusama, 97, died on Aug. 14 in Tokyo, with her studio announcing her death on Wednesday, Aug. 26.
Her work and obsession with reoccurring motifs, including the infinity rooms and, most notably, polka dots became her signature style.
“Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction and poetry,” according to a statement announcing her death on her website.
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“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” the statement continued.
The piece at the NCMA is called “Light of Life” and debuted in 2018 as part multimedia exhibit “You Are Here: Light, Color and Sound Experiences” that drew more than 100,000 visitors to the park, The News & Observer previously reported.
The exhibit “You Are Here” was inspired by Kusama’s traveling exhibit, Infinity Mirror Rooms, but “demand for work from Kusama was so high that the museum couldn’t get one of her pieces for the show,” The N&O reported. However, when three pieces went on the market, the North Carolina museum was able to snatch up “Light of Life.”
When it was briefly on display in New York, people lined up for more than six hours to view inside the box for a minute, The N&O reported in 2018.
The piece has remained on display in North Carolina except for a brief period of time in 2023 when the piece was damaged after an employee accidentally hit it with a floor scrubber while cleaning, The N&O previously reported.
The piece, along with more than hundreds of other pieces of artwork, can be seen for free at the North Carolina Museum of Art, 2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh.
This story was originally published August 27, 2026 at 4:12 PM with the headline “How to see Yayoi Kusama’s unique infinity room art piece in North Carolina.”
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